Sustained Investigation #1

Artist's Statement:

Jillian Wight

Medsker

AP Art and Design

12 October 2021

With this work, I wanted to mark a starting point in my exploration of the question, “how can I use design to explore the importance of perception to the concept of beauty?” I have always been really drawn to the complexities of “beauty” when it comes to artwork, and I think that this investigation provides a great opportunity for me to pick apart this curiosity. I am really happy with the results of this piece, although I cannot wait to see how my style develops and improves over these next weeks. I want to continue experimenting with materials and refining my use of color as the year progresses.

To put this piece together, I started with a piece of sturdy white paper. I then went in with my Dual-Brush markers and Blick fine-point pens to create the first layer of designs. I then added white gel pen on top to bring out shapes and highlights. On areas that I messed up, I used another layer of paper and attached it with masking tape. Finally, I crafted bugs out of encaustic wax and attached these to the page also using masking tape.

In order to best explore my theme, I really wanted to focus on the juxtaposition of themes of beauty (such as hearts, flowers, color, etc.) while focusing on subjects that are untraditionally beautiful and very intriguing to the eye (including an octopus, a broken egg, numerous warped human figures, etc.). I think this really gave the piece so much interest, and highlighted my question well. I wanted to really see where the flow of this piece took me so I began with the top left corner and worked my way across the age from there. In order to maintain a cohesive sense of balance, I added flowers in opposite corners and varied the color thoughtfully. I left lines of space where I felt they made sense and layered patterns in places I thought would work well. At one point, I was working on the project late at night and realized that I had started to draw a strawberry that just didn’t look right. I knew I needed to take a break so I went to bed and then cut out paper to layer over it and redraw it the next day. This worked pretty well! I am also really proud of any use of encaustic wax. I had never tried to create a three-dimensional element to a project before using this method, and I think that my combination of painting with the wax and carving it away to add detail was quite effective. I’m excited to see how this concept evolves!

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