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Lord Grey Academy,
Years 10 and 12
Video capturing ink, pencil and pastel drawings on paper

Using Rachel Jones’s work as a starting point, students from Lord Grey Academy explored scale and mark-making to approach ways of looking at Vincent van Gogh’s self-portrait and consider how they could respond creatively to visual, contextual and cultural sources of inspiration.

Playing with size and proportion, the group worked experimentally in The Ģ����Ƶ’s Leon Kossoff Learning Centre, using a range of materials and paper sizes. The resulting studies range from abstracted drawings zooming in on Van Gogh’s brushstrokes to details collected around the Ģ����Ƶ Gallery. They were then scanned and layered digitally to create this video.

Layered Landscapes

Ysgol Treffynnon, Year 9

Charcoal, graphite, carbon paper monoprints and ink on paper

Students at Ysgol Treffynnon in Holywell, Wales, took part in a workshop responding to works of art by Vincent van Gogh and Rachel Jones, reflecting on their local environment and its connections to their identity. The local environment is also deeply connected to The Ģ����Ƶ historically, as Ģ����Ƶs Ltd (the textile company run by the Ģ����Ƶ family in the 19th and 20th century) had two factories in the local area of Greenfield.

“We were inspired by Van Gogh and Jones because of how they use unique lines to form their artwork, so we made patterns and lines and used them in our artwork. We also made monoprints of Greenfield Valley, St Winifred’s Well and parts of our local area to connect it to our identity. Our artwork was created throughout the day. We then worked in groups to place the pieces everyone had made using different techniques into one big art piece. Our horizons are based on things we could see out of the window. We were inspired by the layers Van Gogh put in his painting and how he liked Japanese prints”.

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Christ the King Catholic High School, Year 10

Acrylic paint on canvas board

Students from Christ the King School in Preston have been exploring themes of identity and symbolism. Prior to their visit to the Ģ����Ƶ Gallery, each student provided images of objects representing aspects of their identity, which were collaged digitally into a collective self-portrait. During their subsequent visit to the Ģ����Ƶ Gallery, the class spent the morning engaging with works in the collection and, focusing on Vincent van Gogh’s self-portrait, thinking critically about what objects, clothing and backgrounds in portraits can tell the viewer. In the afternoon, they experimented with Van Gogh’s bold use of thick impasto brushstrokes to paint a tiled version of their collective self-portrait.

Oooh, ahhh, grrr, mmmn, yeah!

St Edward’s Catholic Primary School, Years 4–6

Watercolour, pencil, wax crayon and acrylic on canvas board

Children from Years 4, 5 and 6 visited the Ģ����Ƶ Gallery to look closely at Vincent van Gogh’s Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear. Back at school, we studied the work of the contemporary artist Rachel Jones to find our own moment of artistic inspiration.

We thought about the use of colour and mark-making and experimented with different materials and techniques to understand how we might create our own ‘sense of self’ through our artwork.

Inspired by Rachel Jones’s interest in teeth and mouths, we looked at our own mouth and simplified it to make it look, as Jones describes it, “beautiful, mysterious and complicated”.

Stella, aged 14

Embroidery and heat transfer ink on fabric

My artwork takes inspiration from Van Gogh in the texture of the stitches, and from Rachel Jones in the use of hand and fingerprint motifs. Hands are one of the ways we can express our thoughts and feelings, and many of us rely on them every day. Whether it’s thumbprints in the stitching or nails in the appliqué throughout this piece, parts of hands have been concealed and then partly revealed.

Michael, Coin Street Over 50s Art Group

Pastel on paper

This work is based on a selfie taken on the way to the Ģ����Ƶ Gallery on a very hot day in July. The picture was taken on the train, with Vincent van Gogh’s selfportrait in mind. In the gallery, I returned to the Van Gogh again, sat down, looked and thought for a while.

In the ensuing weeks I have practised sketching myself using a mirror and other images and reviewed again the work of Rachel Jones with this submission as my result.

Llanura, aged 17

Paint and thread on cotton apron

Vincent van Gogh’s original self-portrait famously does not feature the ear, so here we are playing
with disjointing his work. Parts of the original painting are omitted, scaled inaccurately or
emphasised. Van Gogh’s Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear is all about what isn’t there, but my
artwork chooses to re-focus and remodel it as a portrait of self. Embroidery is used as ‘material
painterliness’, reflecting Van Gogh’s use of textured impasto paint. In the same way that narratives
around Van Gogh are muddy, unsure and obscured, Self-Portrait with the Ear mirrors the contemporary taste for an artist shrouded in myth and bandages; take what you want from it.

Linda, SMart Network community group

Collaged zine with pen and pencil on paper

This zine was made by a member of SMart, reflecting on recent workshops and art that has inspired them from the Ģ����Ƶ Gallery collection and temporary exhibitions. Here, they have focussed on Vincent van Gogh’s use of colour, alongside their own associations between colour and the expression of human emotions such as joy, fear and inspiration.