Talia's Artist Statement

Throughout my career as an artist, I have strived to create novel characters, settings, and scenes from my imagination, which requires a solid understanding of observed reality.  As a result, most of my work revolves around the drive to visually understand the world around me to the point where I may invent my own scenes and figures. To be able to do this convincingly, I have spent much time studying the figure in a space from life through a combination of quick gestures, slow-working charcoal drawings and compositional studies.  All together, these explorations reinforce my understanding of the figure and its placement within a space, and it is these developing skills that ultimately build the foundation in understanding of what makes a visual scene feel alive.

Knowledge in traditional technique and figure study has aided me in my ability to produce character design and digital art, with much of my recent body of work consisting of experimentation with digital mediums. Yet, over the course of such explorations, one question was repeatedly raised during critique: was the product of an artistic exploration valid if it wasn’t valuable in terms of traditional art standards? In other words, is character concept art, which often disregards the space a figure is placed in, an acceptable art form, particularly within a digital medium? Through my work, I decide to defy such concerns, and, in fact, utilize my knowledge of traditional technique to enhance my ability to depict the imagined in a digital format. Indeed, I dare to claim that artistic endeavors conducted through non-traditional means are just as valid as critically acclaimed traditional work.