Sustained Investigation #1

Artist's Statement:

Jillian Wight

Medsker

AP Art and Design 

17 October 2022

For this work, I wanted to show the contrasting desires of two individuals, and how that difference connected them as humans.  I depicted an old man and a young girl, each with a skeleton sort of crammed inside them to suggest that the man wishes he was young again and the girl admires the old man and is excited to be old.  The work was based on a phrase that I often hear from my grandpa and his friend Tony, “don’t get old!”  I wanted to reflect the comical undertones of the phrase in my piece.  I also really wanted to practice my ability to create a narrative, so I emphasized the body language of the characters and also placed them on a long road, which I hoped would suggest a journey and show the reader that despite their ironically opposite longings, the two are on the path of life together.  

I didn’t experiment with my materials as much as I wanted to in this piece.  I decided to use felt tip pens because I liked the amount of control they gave me over the small defining details in each character, for example, the wrinkles in the skin of the old man and the skeleton inside each.  I chose to keep the piece black and white because I wanted to challenge myself to create a composition and a narrative to define the mood, rather than relying on color.  

This piece was a little out of my comfort zone because my work is usually extremely colorful and does not focus so much on form.  However, I really wanted to push the “drawing” aspect of the artwork.  I experimented a bit with my composition, as I was really unsure of how to place each figure.  I’m happy with the result, though I wish there was something that drew the eye to the middle of the page rather than to the outer edges.  I also experimented and revised my perspective, adding another layer of paper over a place I felt I’d messed up before. 

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