Thomas Frost

Galston High School

Artwork title

They were there

HSC year

2016

ARTEXPRESS year

2017

Expressive form

Drawing

Artist’s statement

Inspired by the time-honoured genre of portraiture, I attempted to invigorate this subject matter with a contemporary twist. Experimenting with lighting techniques I had seen in public art projects, I juxtaposed vivid colours with more sombre expressions. In deciding on my medium I experimented with pen drawing, watercolour and coloured pencil before deciding on pastels. Each drawing in my series represents a person from my life whose facial qualities represented various technical challenges. My intention was for the drawings to display the person’s innate personality without obvious expression. My inspiration came from experiencing public art projects such as Vivid light festival and multi-sensory performances in which people are displayed in a different shade or light, both figuratively and physically.