Churches and Cathedrals And Inspiration

For some inspiration on my current brief I have been looking at lots of images that I could find that displayed patterns with star like shapes in them. I have always been an admirer of churches and cathedral's and the stunning patterns that you can find in their architecture so I saw this as a great opportunity to look at some of these images for inspiration for my work. The patterns created in them are star like and geometrical but they were made in a very traditional and beautiful way. I found a brilliant book called Church's and Cathedral's that is full of imagery from the inside and outside of some of the most remarkable sacred buildings. I have tried to incorporate some of the things I loved the most from this book into my designs mainly focusing around how the patterns expand and explode so much and the detail within them. Some of my favourite and most inspirational images are shown below.

I also found some old leaflet books on some iconic churches and cathedrals when I visited my nana's house last week. I found these to include some stunning scenery from the interior of the churches but to also have some really interesting objects and patterns inside them. Some examples of this are below.

I found it quite difficult to find artist research around the subject which linked in with my work I think mainly because it's a new subject that I haven't touched upon before so wasn't too sure where to start. After searching for a long time I finally found two artists which I feel have really captured my attention each for different reasons.

The first artist I found was Alphonse Mucha. I was lucky enough to find a book full of his beautiful illustrations, paintings and postcards at quite a reasonable price to use as reference for my current brief. I found his work to be a great inspiration for my work because his work is very decorative and detailed and also includes a lot of shapes as pattern often not only places around the women he draws but on them as well. I also found his designs very useful in terms of colour as I found a colour palette to work with for my designs for the BMW competition as I felt a slight warmth in his colour palette that I thought fitted in quite well with my theme of hope and light.