McQueen

The theme of this assignment is “Narrative”. What this meant was we needed our art to tell a story, either our own or someone else. For my piece, I choose to tell stories from my grandmother's life. My Piece is entitled “McQueen ''. McQueen was her maiden name. It has also been passed down to both my dad and me in our middle names. The way I represented these stories was first deciding which four stories or parts from her life to show as well as the objects I felt best represented them, with the help from my dad. The piece consists of four oil paintings on 8x8 canvas. The first painting is of an iron table. The story behind this object is that world war 11 started when my grandmother was 8 years old in Scotland. Her family did not have a bomb shelter so instead, they were given a large iron table to hide under. The second painting is of a nurse’s uniform lying on a bed. When my Grandmother was 16 she ran away from home because of her relationship with her mother. Her father helped her get a job and a room at the hospital. The third painting is of a bike. I wanted to show a sweeter and more heartfelt story from her life as well so I chose her honeymoon. She got married at 19, and for her honeymoon she and my grandfather, because they didn't have much money, biked around Scotland while staying at hostels. For my final painting, I wanted to show part of her life as a mother after she moved to the United States. She was a stay-at-home mother to four kids. I asked my dad what object reminds him of her and he said a rolling pin because she would bake homemade bread 2x a week growing up. . I choose these stories because I wanted to represent different sections of her life, and tell her story chronologically. I also wanted some of the stories to be from important or shaping parts of her life, like the story of her running away.

One main element represented in my work is texture. All four were done using only a pallet knife, besides the underpainting of acrylic wash which I used a brush for. I layered the paint thick and showed movement through the direction of my paint. I wanted to represent a memory-like quality in this piece. I think that was accomplished through the texture of the direction of the paint. The themes represented are memory, family, love, war, childhood, and growing up. This piece is partially related to my pieces from last year through the theme of growing up since these pieces are presented chronologically.

My first step in this process was to talk to my dad and narrow down the stories I felt were more important, and interesting and showed different sides to her and parts of her life. I then found my reference images and started sketching. Another element represented is color because my paintings have a very similar color scheme to further illustrate that they make up one story. The colors I used were Titanium white, Ivory Black, Phthalo Blue, yellow ochre, burnt sienna, and naphthol red light. I painted going color by color rather than canvas by canvas. I started with blue, then yellow, white/gray, and added only little details with red. This was the first time I have used a palette knife and I found it surprisingly easier than I thought. It was much easier for me to create the texture I wanted. I did, however, struggle slightly with detail because of how slowly the paint dried. I tried to have a simple composition to draw attention only to the object. This came through in three out of the four. The 2nd piece’s composition, the nurse uniform, did not match the rest of the three. It was too zoomed out and shows too many other things going on. It was also visually confusing because of the angle and lack of perspective and shadows. I redid it and fixed it by only showing part of the bed and dress and leaving out the rest of the room.