For the Senior Art Exhibition, I would like to continue to explore old family photos. This is something that came up recently in my artistic endeavours. I want to continue this process I started with my current watercolor paintings where I use a cut-out square and place it around a photo until I find something of interest. Some things are related to family such as hobbies, while other things are more of just something I find visually pleasing.
Conceptually each piece may be a very small part of a photo, but have much more meaning in terms of my personal family. So far just working for a short time with these watercolor paintings, I have learned much about my family just from chatting with my Grandma and Grandpa about these photos. I learned about who is in them, their interests, etc. Something I found is that my Great-Grandma, and even my Great-Great-Grandma loved animals, which relates to my personal interests and my body of work.
I would like to explore a mixture of different media. Much of my work at St. Norbert has included acrylic and oil paints. I explored contrasting high detail with abstract backgrounds. My plan for my Senior Art Exhibition is to add these techniques to my more current work of family photos. As much of my work has included animals, personally I would like to go back to working with portraiture and the figure. In addition, this semester I am planning to do paintings with added material like newspaper, canvas scraps, and other found objects. Continuing this into my Senior Show is definitely something I would like to further explore.
Finally I would like to work more with “canvas pillows”. About a year or so ago I was inspired by Rafael Salas. He had displayed these stuffed canvases (much like pillows) with paintings on them which gave them a more three-dimensional look. I created some of my own which ended up being some of my favorite work made at St. Norbert. I think incorporating this to my Senior Show will add conceptually to the body of work as it will give a more home-like family feeling.
In terms of scale, my plan is to work in a variety of sizes. As much as I liked working small with watercolor, I would love to try and make some of those at a larger scale (maybe 16x20in. Or larger). The canvas pillows I made were also smaller and I think would make a bigger impact if I made some at a more life-like scale. In general my scale of work will get larger then in previous works.
In conclusion, I plan to create a series of work referencing family photos. One piece will be similar to “The Beauties of Nature” piece I created with hanging canvas pillows but in a life-like scale. Another piece will actually be a mini series of watercolor pieces that I would like to just continue to add to. Again, I would like to explore with larger sizes with these watercolor pieces. Finally, as I am going to start working with portraiture this semester, my last piece for the show will be portraits exploring abstract backgrounds and emphasizing on the parts of photos I think are the most important.
General Project Timeline:
-Aug 26 through Oct. = Watercolor Mini series
-Nov. through Jan. = Canvas pillows
-Dec. through Mar. = Portraiture/Figurative paintings
-Mar. through April = Presentation/set-up of show
Please see Canvas Pillows, The Beauties of Nature, and Watercolor Mini Series posts for images referencing my inspiration for the Senior Exhibition.
