Nicolas Soltero

The concepts I mainly deal with or show in these pieces are self-reflection and self portrayal. I drew myself twice in ways that closely relate to how I see myself, and I overlay photography of myself with images that represent things I like to represent myself as well (in those instances, video games I like). With these works my original inspiration came from trying to come up with ideas for pieces to do. I wasn’t sure whether to create some big piece(s) that related to me, like paintings or models, or smaller items that simply represented things I like. Thinking more about both, and remembering Van Gogh and Basquiat pieces I had seen in the years prior as I had looked at those artists for both art and English classes, I started coming up with the idea that I could do some pieces that would be closely linked with myself that would represent self-reflections of who I am and my interests.

The works of Van Gogh and Basquiat were major influences in my work. Their self portrait paintings were very interesting to me with their compositions being closely linked to how they viewed themselves, with Van Gogh and his color/image choices and Basquiat and his color choices and abstract imagery.

My first piece was originally drawn by hand with pencil on grid paper, then re-created digitally. My second was based on a digital photo, then redrawn on a large grid which was then recreated by coloring individual squares. From there on, I decided to go with a mainly digital medium as I was more comfortable with creating pieces in that format. I was very knowledgeable. My teacher was able to help me use programs such as Photoshop in the creation of my later pieces. I feel that because of that, the format will fit in well with my interest in digital media such as television and video games. I also took pictures of action figures and edited them from poses onto backgrounds from the original cartoons they came from. As an added bonus, the medium allows me to become more creative with my works and will allow me to create more pieces that the audience will enjoy.

I justify my selection of works as I believe they are able to express my own feelings about my personality and interests with the imagery and subject matter. The theme of the presentation is regarding myself and self-reflection. My interests are part of myself, and the self-reflection will be examining how much of a part of me they are.

I feel that the way I will arrange the works will be grouped, and there may be more groups if I add more pieces. I have a few other ideas that I plan to work on. Since these pieces mostly have my face, the audience will be walking into an area that is surrounded by similar imagery. I will have to label each piece and what they represent, as well as explaining artistic choices made such as color and included imagery.

My overall vision is that the display will give the audience an interesting experience with an exploration of who I am and my interests. I do not want my exhibition to be boring or too strange, it should engage the audience with interesting pieces. All the pieces will be ideally hung on the wall, though I am also considering including a repeating slideshow that shows each piece as a small display, like the digital pieces for example. Hung pictures on a wall are typically easier viewed and understood by audiences. They are easier on the eyes and can be viewed by several people at once. As descriptions of the subject matter is commonly included side-by-side with a hung piece, it allows the audience to understand the subject matter in a way that gives them time to read it all, and is easier on their eyes than if it were digital.

For the images that were created digitally, the video game based pieces will each act as their own individual pieces whereas the ones based on the action figure will be grouped in pairs of 2 or 3, with several green screen photos around them to show the audience the original photos that were edited to have the backgrounds. This will be done to show the process. The backgrounds themselves will also be included, but will not count as art pieces created and moreso act as part of showing the process, and what the backgrounds originally looked like. There may also be stills from the show so the audience can see what the poses were based on.