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Friday, 4 May 2012

I wish i'd done this - Leif Podhajsky - 'Innerspeaker'

I have been asked to write a 800 word piece on some artwork that I wish I had created myself. The brief suggests that the chosen piece should have had a strong influence on my work and an influence on my practises also. 

When thinking of work that has inspired me to a point where it has had major influence on my own work there are two pieces that come to mind. The first is an album cover called Innerspeaker for the band Tame Impala created by my most adored artist and creative director Leif Podhajsky. The second is Damien Hirst's Butterfly Monochrome Wallpaper. I find both of these pieces a creative inspiration to me personally because of the symmetrical layout which has been created in them. I am fascinated by the way that Hirst has used nothing but butterflies to create an effect of peering into a kaleidoscope. His chosen tones and muted colours also really invite me into his work, as I think he's worked this well as a balance between the pattern and colour because I think too much colour would have been overwhelming with the intricate patterns. 

After weighing out the two images I chose to discuss the image by Leif  Podhajsky partly because he is my favourite artist but moreover because I feel very passionate about the image and its purpose.

Tame Impala 'Innerspeaker'. Album artwork, mixed media, 2010. Leif Podhajsky.  

Butterfly Wallpaper. Damien Hirst.

 I first became aware of this image when I heard the bands music and went out to purchase the album. I was instantly impressed and attracted to the album cover and after doing a little more research on the Podhasky's work I became transfixed with his style and his other artwork. In this image and many of his other pieces he uses beautiful images of landscapes and alters the perspective and layout to create a hypnotising picture. On his website it is stated that his work is influenced by nature and psychedelic vibes; 'His work explores themes of connectedness, the relevance of nature and the psychedelic or  altered experience. By utilising these subjects he attempts to coerce the viewer into a realignment with themselves and their surroundings '. 

Leif Podhajsky's image has really had a strong impact on me as a surface designer as although it is a different style of work to mine, I feel that the idea behind it is very similar. All of Podhajsky's work has a hallucinatory style to it that I find almost trancing, also his designs are very experimental with colour, shape and scale. I have taken the same sort of approach, especially with my current work, to my design work as I am constantly trying to create designs that are full of colour and shape. I enjoy experimenting with shape on Illustrator as I find it to be more precise and an efficient way to create accurate designs. He takes simple shapes or backgrounds from nature and uses his creative knowledge to turn them into something mind blowing and beautiful. 

Something that really draws me to his work is that he creates album covers. I have always been a huge fan of music and I see album artwork as a way of bringing my adoration for art and music together. An album cover can be the most important part of an album for an artist as its the visual advertisement that the potential buyer will be drawn to. I therefore think it's extremely important for the designer of the cover to ensure that they create exactly the correct image for them and Podhajsky does just that. His covers really represent the bands for who they are and what the music sounds like, its almost like a perfect visual input to describe them. He really links the designs to the mood and feelings that the bands want you to feel when you listen to it and I see that as being quite a difficult task. 

Another connection between mine and Podhajsky's work is his use of bold and bright colours. He uses these vibrant colours as a form of expression to create the upbeat and psychedelic mood which is something that I have taken as an inspiration from him and used in my own work. I see colour as being one of the biggest forms of expression as I think it can show emotion, moods and feelings appropriately and I count it as one of the major pieces that helps to bring my work together.


Leif produces most of his artwork for album covers for alternative bands such as Lykke Li, Young Magic and Tame Impala. As well as 'Innerspeaker' he has also created the following album covers for Tame Impala. 




In the future I hope to progress my photoshop skills further to enable me to alter things in the way that Leif Podhajsky has with the 'Innerspeaker' cover. I would love to be able to produce album covers for bands as it's something that I have a strong passion for and am always paying attention to. For me it would be a great sense of achievement to create a piece of work that completely summed up a bands style and emotion, therefore I will look into this for future work. I feel I have learnt a lot from not only looking at this one image of Podhajsky's work but also his other pieces as they are all so individual and really intrigue me as an artist. 

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