The End

So as we reach the end of the semester, and are amidst our many final projects.. it's nice to look back at all the work we have done this semester and also to plan ahead for new things.. This Summer I am goin to Bar Harbor, Maine and also San Francisco for a week. I plan on doing studies similar to the pleine aire ones we did in class with water color. I am excited to see the sites in both and also going along with my theme of animals, to see the seals on the harbor in California. The views are also spectacular up on Acadia National Park, so I plan on doing some landscape paintings up there in water color, as well. It'll be interesting to try to capture the layering technique I am trying out with washes of images of the ocean and the shore. Well I guess we'll see what happens.. hope everyone has a great summer and I'll probably see most of you in Painting 2!

Artist Statement

This past semester alot of my studies have been about life, more specifically animal life. I am exploring different kinds of animal cruelty, and different ways to portray it. I have done some representative pieces but I am finding now that they are a little to didactic for my taste. The piece I did for the Nursing Show was done by layering transparencys over top one another, which is more ambigous than some of my other naturalistic paintings, so I hope to head more in that direction. I think maybe for the final I might try the layering technique again, but with the animal theme in mind. I have also done alot of sketches involving family and friends. I genuinely have an interest in people and their relationship with others, which would also include their relationship with animals. This also ties in with the animal cruelty theme again.
I would like to at some point do some direct studies of animals maybe at a farm or at a zoo, since most of them have been from photographs with the exceptions of drawings I have done of my dog and cat. I think this method of direct observation serves to better capture the animals personality, and also evoke emotion from my audience. This is always a goal of mine. I want to bring awareness to my audience. I want them to be emotionally moved by the events that are depicted in my art. In fact one of the artists Tiffany suggested really captures the emotions that I would like to convey in my art.. check out Sue Coe if you are interested.

Terry Winters

I checked out this artist, that created the work in the post below, oh and by the way sorry about that, I had some technical difficulties.. but anyway I checked out Terry Winters, who was the artist featured in Tiffany's post. I really enjoyed the way he varies his art work. The work in Tiffany's blog was surreal though had some very naturalistic aspects to it, like the tape measurer ribbon. He varies in medium as well, from oil to lithographs and other printmaking techniques. Although both featured in the blogs are oil paintings, you can see the differences in his execution. In the one featured below his focus is on pattern and repetition of colors. The background is very abstracted along with the obscure figures in the foreground, in fact one of the only things that this painting shares with the other surreally done one is its focus on dimension. They both place on emphasis on layers and depth. I just thought this was interesting and shows how an artist can evolve.

Macro vs Micro

So I am very excited about this new project. I think it's very different from any of the ones we have done previously, especially since many of us probably are considering doing the nursing competition. I have seen alot of people starting them and most of them are very biologically themed so it should be interesting. For mine I am hoping to somehow collaborate brain cancer cells and then the support ribbons that have raised money for research on this disease. The ribbon color for general cancer is pink so I am going to layer and intertwine the two. One of the things that made me think of the whole layering aspect was Paul Carpenter's work in the recent Undergrad Show. Some of you probably know him, I think he is a senior painting major. I do not, but I found his work really amazing. He layers scene upon scene on his canvases with various colors and different areas of dripping paint and sketchy line quality. It really is quite unique to see. Hopefully I will depict a layering quality similiar to that but with my own spin on it.

Sol LeWitt

So I really enjoyed reading about Sol LeWitt today. He was someone that I had never really heard of until now and his story was very refreshing. First of all, whenever I hear a success story to the degree of the LeWitt family's, it always kind of sparks revelation in me. If the road ahead for us hear at UD looks bumpy, it's kind of reasuring that those have been through much worse and have managed such great success while keeping true to themselves. LeWitt's parents were two lower class, Russian immigrants that came to America and started a legacy, whose son moved on after them, living up to what they were, and probably to what they had hoped from him. LeWitt's modest attitude that was captured in this article reallly was impressing. He was granted awards which he turned down, public interviews which were denied, even commemoration that was not accepted. This man wanted absolutely nothing for all the work he had lived his life doing. He had all the fame and fortune that only seldom comes with the life of an artist, and he wanted nothing of it. Stories like these always seem to amaze me because after all the obstacles we all know will come with living the lives of artists, I think if you are rewarded it would be easy to fall into that snotty sort of lifestyle.
Its something I have been thinking about lately especially because of some of the things Amy Wilson had to say on Thursday. I really appreciated how she admitted to keeping herself grounded with the small "toys" she that she likes to create and hand out periodically. And how it keeps the audiences she had always intended on having instead of only those now who can afford her art. All artists at one point or another have been through the "starving artist phase" but to me its those that don't lose their heads when they reach the top that are the real artists.

Happy Easter

Ok so I hope everyone's having a Happy Easter, even though its like 30 degrees outside, but anyway I am really excited about the new project. For the Narrative, I am painting images of the animals at the shelter that I work at. I took pictures today at the shelter of some of my favorites. I am trying to depict alot of the issues that the public usually doesn't see, lke the animals with sicknesses that eventually will have to be put down. If you look at some of Sue Coe's work you can really see the suffering animals endure, especially her piece of animal control bringing in a new dog to a kennel. Her work definitely inspires me and I will definitely be writing more on her later.