Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Artist Statement
It’s intriguing how everyone is always alone, in an impenetrable place in their head, and yet it is an experience that everyone has. This is why I create art- I want to share my unique view of a life that everyone lives. The idea of unity amongst everyone in our shared life experiences, emotions, and ideas made me think that it would be interesting to investigate how different cultures have their own views on universal concepts, such as creation, human relations, life, and death. These are concepts that do not have an apparent explanation- what happens when you die?- and thus have traditionally warranted a mythological explanation. These cultural stories guided my work this year, and I started off illustrating traditional stories and putting my own take on them, which turned into me creating visual representations of the things that myths from all over have in common. By exploring this theme, I’ve been able to experiment with new techniques, form a preference for paint and graphite, and develop a more distinct style that incorporates my aesthetic inclination towards bright colors, curved shapes, and dark backgrounds. I’ve learned not to be shy about self-expression, whether that means subtle pencil drawings in the style of the Renaissance masters; strange, dreamy scenes like Dali or Ernst; or fluorescent splatters that emulate Daniel Richter. I’ve tried to mesh together my favorite styles and medias in experiments, to create something interesting while still overcoming my familiar barriers of working slowly and not having a great attention span. But I have still had achievements this year- I can see how cultures are interrelated through storytelling and how they relate to my own life, all while creating something that can filter through that isolation inside my head.
Monday, April 27, 2009
Death
-April-
This is the last piece I did, and it's interesting because conceptually it's my favorite, but aesthetically I'm unsure of it. The image came to me when my friend mentioned that she knew two sisters in art; one liked to draw skulls all the time, and the other always drew birds. After I had this image, I decided to use it to show a commonality in myths. Since myths were traditionally used to explain the unknown, and death is the ultimate unknown, all cultures have their own myths about death. Most cultures are interesting in that they depict death as being just like life, the only difference being that technically you're dead. In many cultures, the dead can come back and visit the living, and do practically anything that a living person can do. Some dead even do seemingly living-exclusive things like eat, play and keep posessions, since some ancient cultures would bury their dead with food, riches, toys and figurines, like Egyptian pharaohs or the Inca ice maiden. Anyways, I wanted to show this lack of change by having the dead birds feeding, something that typically only live organisms would do.
Like my "Microcosm" piece, I used this to experiment with my two medias of choice, paint and graphite. First, I sketched and shaded my birds, and then I painted over them with a watered down combination of white and a little pthalocyanine blue so that the shading would blend and show through. I used this for added contrast, since the birds are cool colors, very light and delicately shaded while the background is warm, dark, and just shaded with darks. The contrast makes it more interesting, but my favorite element in this piece is how the compostition is appealing and guides the viewer's eye around the piece.
An Old, Stinking Elephant
-April-
This is my favorite piece! I was inspired by a quote by Daniel Richter that went something like, 'Sometimes art is like a fresh breeze wafting around the corner, and sometimes it's like a stinking old elephant lumbering by.' (I've only ever seen it at the Daniel Richter exhibit at the DAM, so I don't know exactly what it was. A bit more awesome, but pretty much the same thing.) Anyways, I really liked this image, so I decided to paint it using watercolors and relate it to my theme via the story about the elephant in a dark room. I'm sure you know it, but I'll just refresh your memory- it's the story of an elephant in a part of the world that has never seen any elephants, and it is put in a dark room and people go in to 'see it.' Everyone goes in and feels a different part of it and thinks it's something else, like someone thinks its leg is a tree, someone else thinks its ear is a fan, yet another person thinks its back is a table. The point of this is that everyone has different ideas, even if they're about the same idea. I've heard this used to describe religions, but I decided to apply it to myths, since cultures have so many myths that describe the same thing but are all different, so I wanted to show the uniqueness of mythology but the universality of what it describes.
For this, I decided to make the elephant all sorts of random colors, since color is the element of art that appeals to me the most. To make it more interesting, I used the surrealistic technique of dripping a liquid down the page to make the different areas of color mingle together. Then, to make it more bold, I outlined it in black. This, doing the actual elephant, was the quick part and it only took me an afternoon. The background took a lot more consideration, since I couldn't leave it white but I didn't want it black, and I didn't want to overuse one color by putting it in the background. After a long while, the suggestion was made (by "La Llama en Llamas") that I should use zebra print in the background, which was really the best idea I could hope for. It wasn't all black or all white, or any of the colors, and it even added to the contrast and the idea, referring to the story by suggesting a question of whether it was an elephant or a zebra. In the end, the color, contrast, and texture of this piece made me really like it.
Self- Portrait
-April-
This was my first experiment with a style that smushes together all of the things I like; namely, bright colors and Daniel Richter's style. Before I did this, I was messing with photos in HP Image Zone (no, not Photoshop, I don't have it or know how to use it) and seeing what effects I could get. I thought all of the things I could do were interesting, so I decided to make a piece that used a ton of different effects. First, I had to take a picture of myself that worked, and then I edited it maybe twenty times over and printed out little pictures of all the edited photos. I used these as reference, in the end only using ten different styles, and had to stick with my little copies since my computer dies with all the full-size originals. (Each picture was a little smaller than the piece with the realistic eye, I would guess.) After that, I sketched out my picture onto the canvas, divided it into different shards, and colored each of them randomly, only decided how to do them as I did them, so I didn't have any idea what the final product would look like until I had it in front of me. This caused a few little problems but worked surprisingly well; I only had to repaint a couple areas. The biggest problem was actually the canvas- it was really big and also unstable, as I discovered after I had stapled the canvas to the frame. One of the wood pieces I used was warped, so it was constantly pulling out its staples and trying to mess up my canvas, but it hasn't succeeded yet. Anyways, after I painted myself, I painted the background black and splattered some of the colors I used onto it, so that it would be filled but not distracting from the piece. Overall, this piece was easy except for its large size, since painting it was pretty simplistic. Because of the size, though, it took a really long time.
The idea behind this was to show how storytelling, represented by the tape, helps to hold together all of the different facets of yourself. After all, no one is just the person they show to the world- maybe they're also a space cowboy or a pirate or a colonist on the moon. But without some way to express this imaginatively, such as storytelling, these parts of you would never be used and would die off. Thus, creative writing was created, both to entertain and to satisfy those different parts of yourself.
This was my first experiment with a style that smushes together all of the things I like; namely, bright colors and Daniel Richter's style. Before I did this, I was messing with photos in HP Image Zone (no, not Photoshop, I don't have it or know how to use it) and seeing what effects I could get. I thought all of the things I could do were interesting, so I decided to make a piece that used a ton of different effects. First, I had to take a picture of myself that worked, and then I edited it maybe twenty times over and printed out little pictures of all the edited photos. I used these as reference, in the end only using ten different styles, and had to stick with my little copies since my computer dies with all the full-size originals. (Each picture was a little smaller than the piece with the realistic eye, I would guess.) After that, I sketched out my picture onto the canvas, divided it into different shards, and colored each of them randomly, only decided how to do them as I did them, so I didn't have any idea what the final product would look like until I had it in front of me. This caused a few little problems but worked surprisingly well; I only had to repaint a couple areas. The biggest problem was actually the canvas- it was really big and also unstable, as I discovered after I had stapled the canvas to the frame. One of the wood pieces I used was warped, so it was constantly pulling out its staples and trying to mess up my canvas, but it hasn't succeeded yet. Anyways, after I painted myself, I painted the background black and splattered some of the colors I used onto it, so that it would be filled but not distracting from the piece. Overall, this piece was easy except for its large size, since painting it was pretty simplistic. Because of the size, though, it took a really long time.
The idea behind this was to show how storytelling, represented by the tape, helps to hold together all of the different facets of yourself. After all, no one is just the person they show to the world- maybe they're also a space cowboy or a pirate or a colonist on the moon. But without some way to express this imaginatively, such as storytelling, these parts of you would never be used and would die off. Thus, creative writing was created, both to entertain and to satisfy those different parts of yourself.
Portrait
-March-
Since graphite portraits are fun for me, I decided to work in a portrait of my best friend, since she fits in my theme as a storyteller since she writes novels. The hardest part of this was the background, since I didn't like it as well as the face, so I wasn't very compelled to do it. At first, I did more of a cottonwood-type tree in the background, but its shade and texture were too similar to the hair, so I decided to use more aspen-type trees so that there would be more contrast. My favorite part, and the part I spent the most time on, was the lips, since I really love her kind of gentle Mona Lisa smile. The best tool I had was my eraser, and I used it the most, especially on the face, hair, and the light splotches in the background that connotate foliage. However, I should have used more value, because I only used one pencil (and just a random one I found lying around, at that) so I had a limited range of darks. Another frustration was that her shirt and knees accumulated strange dark speckles that couldn't be erased, so I had to try to erase them and color darkly around them. Our best guess is that someone was spraying fixative for pastels or charcoal and got it on my picture, since I sit near the door. One of the more interesting parts was that I filled her eyes and rings with words, excerpts from one of her novels, to show how some people are able to see every part of the world as a story waiting to be told. In my first background, the trees were going to be covered in text as well, but I decided to be more subtle (or more lazy, if you choose to interpret it that way) and only have text in the eyes instead of over everything. As far as message goes, this isn't my best piece, but just as a portrait I really like it.
Mitochondrial Eve
-February-
Myths were created as a way of teaching explanations for things that no one was capable of explaining. This is why so many myths are about creation or death, two great unknowns that are hard to explain even now. However, with the rise of science, many myths lost footing and became obsolete and inapplicable to society, which is the idea that I used for this piece. To illustrate this idea, I decided to show Eve in the garden of Eden looking into a mirror. Instead of seeing herself, she sees the alternate version of the past- a prehistoric sea. It spills out of the mirror to show how scientific views commonly overpower mythological views, but it's left up to the viewer to decide if Eve will withstand the battery of the ocean, or whether its volume will be too great for her to survive.
For this, I had to mostly try to work with mistakes that I made, since you can't paint over watercolor, but I also had to try to use new techniques. Some techniques I used were doing lots of layering watercolor on the hair, doing blending on the sea animals by adding dark splotches while they were wet, using a rough sponge to create the texture on the vegetation behind Eve, and using masking to protect her skin from becoming green. However, some of the green leaked into the mirror, so I had to turn that into a "happy little mistake" by turning it into a bunch of seaweed, which actually accentuated the movement of the water and showed its force better. Another mistake I made was the coloration of the sea creature on the left; as you can see, part of the right one is underwater and paler where it's under the water, and the entirety of the left one was suuposed to be underwater. Unfortunately, I forgot to make it the right shade, but luckily it seems to read about as well. Overall, I think this turned out well, though if I could go back in time and do some things differently, I would use rubber cement to create light foam on the water spilling out and I would have painted Eve's legs on wet paper to get the wet-on-wet look, and I also would have made some parts of the painting darker to offset her hair.
Myths were created as a way of teaching explanations for things that no one was capable of explaining. This is why so many myths are about creation or death, two great unknowns that are hard to explain even now. However, with the rise of science, many myths lost footing and became obsolete and inapplicable to society, which is the idea that I used for this piece. To illustrate this idea, I decided to show Eve in the garden of Eden looking into a mirror. Instead of seeing herself, she sees the alternate version of the past- a prehistoric sea. It spills out of the mirror to show how scientific views commonly overpower mythological views, but it's left up to the viewer to decide if Eve will withstand the battery of the ocean, or whether its volume will be too great for her to survive.
For this, I had to mostly try to work with mistakes that I made, since you can't paint over watercolor, but I also had to try to use new techniques. Some techniques I used were doing lots of layering watercolor on the hair, doing blending on the sea animals by adding dark splotches while they were wet, using a rough sponge to create the texture on the vegetation behind Eve, and using masking to protect her skin from becoming green. However, some of the green leaked into the mirror, so I had to turn that into a "happy little mistake" by turning it into a bunch of seaweed, which actually accentuated the movement of the water and showed its force better. Another mistake I made was the coloration of the sea creature on the left; as you can see, part of the right one is underwater and paler where it's under the water, and the entirety of the left one was suuposed to be underwater. Unfortunately, I forgot to make it the right shade, but luckily it seems to read about as well. Overall, I think this turned out well, though if I could go back in time and do some things differently, I would use rubber cement to create light foam on the water spilling out and I would have painted Eve's legs on wet paper to get the wet-on-wet look, and I also would have made some parts of the painting darker to offset her hair.
Waiting
-February-
This is the second painting I did, expressing some people's views that fairy tales (in this culture, often featuring a damsel in distress who is rescued by a prince charming) are unrealistic and negatively affect young girls, making them think that they should just wait around to be saved instead of working hard to get the life they want. Although I don't share this idea, I wanted to illustrate it while playing with common symbols in storytelling. For example, I used the common symbol of a desert representing emptiness and a spiritual void and altered it to be a prairie, a semi-arid desert, instead. I also had to use lots of different painting techniques: I used blending on the sky so it would change from a light shade to a darker shade of blue, impasto on the clouds and gravel to give them a more interesting and realistic texture, many layers of watered-down acrylic paint to make the different shades of the prairie grass (which took the most time and patience out of everything), and a single strand of hair from a brush to make the deatails on the girl, like her eyes, eyebrows, and individual strands of hair. Overall, I like how this helped the color, value and texture in the piece and generated more visual interest.
This is the second painting I did, expressing some people's views that fairy tales (in this culture, often featuring a damsel in distress who is rescued by a prince charming) are unrealistic and negatively affect young girls, making them think that they should just wait around to be saved instead of working hard to get the life they want. Although I don't share this idea, I wanted to illustrate it while playing with common symbols in storytelling. For example, I used the common symbol of a desert representing emptiness and a spiritual void and altered it to be a prairie, a semi-arid desert, instead. I also had to use lots of different painting techniques: I used blending on the sky so it would change from a light shade to a darker shade of blue, impasto on the clouds and gravel to give them a more interesting and realistic texture, many layers of watered-down acrylic paint to make the different shades of the prairie grass (which took the most time and patience out of everything), and a single strand of hair from a brush to make the deatails on the girl, like her eyes, eyebrows, and individual strands of hair. Overall, I like how this helped the color, value and texture in the piece and generated more visual interest.
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