Fall Semester 2010
A true work of art should impart some emotion on the viewer. The artist should strive to control what the viewer sees and perceives.
This semester helped me to realize that I can no longer work by compiling various images that I find on Google. There is greater unity in my pieces which are painted from one photograph, rather than a collage of images that do not fit together well. I spend too much time trying to find the right picture when it so much easier to go out and compose the picture that I want. It give me more control over my work. I am not at the mercy of whatever semi-good quality images I am able to find on the web.
My best piece, by far, is my artist inspired self portrait. I really liked working on a larger scale and I felt very secure regarding my background. Usually my backgrounds are either negative aspects of my painting or do not add anything to the piece at all. I felt that I was able to create a unified environment. Also, I felt that I did a good job of portraying my figure. The unity of this piece largely stemmed, in my opinion, from the fact that I only used one photograph.
My worst piece is my conscious color painting. I never really identified with this project and I was not satisfied with my results. I tried to collage several pictures together into one painting and I felt that I was unsuccessful. My figure had some major proportion issues, although I feel that I have been able to fix these in my revisions. I did not feel that this piece was unified, but rather each element seemed distinctly separate from the others. At one point, I felt as if I was going somewhere with my classical themes. It was interesting for a while, but now I feel like I am ready to move on, at least for now. I feel that I may revisit them again someday, but, at the moment, I feel they are less inspired than some of my other work.
My greatest improvement this year is the way that I handle the backgrounds of my work. I feel that I learned an important lesson with my self portrait, but I have not carried it into the two paintings I did afterward. Next semester I feel that I am going to work more in the vein of my self portrait. I really need to work on finding my picture, as I mentioned earlier. I do not want to spend any more time searching through Google images just to receive consistently poor results.
I want to continue to work in oil paint, but I want to work at a larger scale. I know I want to focus on the figure, but I’m not sure in which way. I feel like I might want to focus on self portraits. With self portraits it is easier for me to control the figure in the painting. I can pose my body in the way that I envision the painting. Also, I can focus less on what the figure looks like if I am painting myself. When I paint someone else, I constantly worry that they are going to see my painting and it will look nothing like them. I feel that it is a lot less stressful to work with your own image, and there is no difficulty in finding your model.
I feel that I am going to continue to look at Gregory Gillespie. He pays equal amounts of attention to his figure and to his surroundings. That is one of the things that I am planning to continue to work on. I do not plan, however, on being as realistic as he is. I plan on representing the figure realistically, but I want my marks to be part of the piece as well. One of the reasons I like my self portrait so much is the presence of the marks in the piece.
My work has seemed to be more visually than conceptually driven, but I would like to try to bring more conceptual thought into my future pieces. Sometimes I find it hard to be conceptual when I am given a specific project to work on, but I feel that I can work on that next semester.
I would like my work to make the viewer feel something. If the viewer gets the same feeling that I do when I look at my piece than I consider it successful. I do not know whether I have been successful in that regard in all of my previous pieces, but I hope that my future pieces will be.
I see my self playing an organizational role in out group’s process. I help make sure that we stay on top of things while contributing creatively to the group. We worked together on creating our design. Now I feel that I am helping us be organized in what we need to do, what we need to bring in, and how we can use our time productively.
By the time we have off-campus exhibition, I would like to have my body of work seem more unified. I would like for a similar style and feel to come out in all of my pieces. I think I have found my direction in working mainly with my image, but I would like if all of my new pieces worked well with each other, as well as on their own.
