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For my summative piece ‘Iconic London’ 2024 I wanted to create my own landscape which combined four iconic London buildings that I have visited (Buckingham Palace, Royal Albert Hall, The Shard, and Big Ben) with similar trees and bushes from my series ‘London’s Psychological Landscape’. Furthermore, I decided to merge The Shard and Big Ben to link to my previous work ‘Building on Mixed Emotions’. The incorporation of black in the buildings represents power that the structures have on the UK population and this is especially true for Big Ben given its connection to the Houses of Parliament, and the white/grey symbolises the more corporate side of the Shard. Moreover, red represents the feelings of excitement people get when visiting London and specifically seeing where royalty live and experiencing concerts in the Royal Albert Hall. The blue represents calmer times in the country when people’s lives aren’t so positive and can also represent the trust the UK population is meant to have in key members of the royal family. Lastly, the yellow represents the generally happy experiences people have when visiting London, and also links to my happy times at the University of Reading depicted by the yellow sky in ‘Reading’.
By having the outline of famous architecture with only a small amount of detail it allows the viewer to focus more on interpreting the emotional meaning of the painting through my use of different colours instead of being distracted by too much structural detail. In addition, my overall use of soft colours links well to colour psychology as it reflects the fact that variations in psychological states can be quite subtle. Furthermore, the red, white, and blue in this painting also symbolise the colours of the Union Jack which is appropriate since the scene shows some of the most iconic buildings in the UK.
The above images show me experimenting with different compositions and ideas for my summative piece. I wanted to do the buildings mainly in black and white to link to my previous work ‘Building on Mixed Emotion’ and to incorporate red and blue to link with ‘London’s Psychological Landscape’. These ideas incorporate a range of Western culture buildings, such as Big Ben, The Shard, 40 Wall Street, Burj Khalifa, Buckingham Palace and Royal Albert Hall.