04. Circle Project

ARTIST STATEMENT:

This artwork isn't really set anywhere, or based off of anything. It is just a collage of my own pictures, arranged in a way that makes them look similar to bubbles. Each of the pictures are individually printed out and cut into many many circles. Even after filling the page, I had many left over circles. Then, I used a black acrylic paint to paint in the background, and mod podge to glue down the images. I choose to create this piece, because I wanted an excuse to use some of my favorite pictures I'd taken, and my first thought when the project was announced was bubbles to different worlds.

There are many, many techniques shown in this piece, each shown in the individual images. Among those are Rule of Thirds, silhouette lighting, framing, both low, and high horizon lines, and low key lighting. My original idea for this project was to paint little landscapes, but I then decided to use my own images, as I always enjoy taking, and using them anywhere I can. So, after printing out the images, I drew and cut out many different sized circles in areas that looked most pleasing in the images. Then, after cutting each one out very slowly by hand for a long time, I arranged the pieces first, which I later realized I shouldn't have done. After arranging the circles, I realized that I had a good arrangement, and now I didn't want to ruin it by taking everything off, painting, and putting it back. So, I ran with my mistakes, and glued everything down anyways. I then spent a rather long time painting the background black, very carefully going around each image. For the background, what I was going to do was splatter some white paint onto the background, but I decided against it, as I felt it would take away from the images too much.

In the beginning, the artwork didn't really have a 'meaning' to me, but as I kept going, I realized it was like many small windows into my life. Everything shown is either from around my home, or some of my favorite places I've been. In one of the pictures, my parents are shown in silhouette. That one is one of my favorites, as it shows some of my favorite things. The white mountains in New Hampshire, and my family. In the future, if I were to go back and recreate a project just like this, I would paint the background first, and possibly add a bit more to it. I also think a couple of the pictures have pencil marks showing, so I would draw a bit lighter on the images when tracing the circles.