Gap Parking Lot #6

Sustained Investigation #6

7 x 12

Acrylic Paint

This is my 6th Sustained Investigation where I painted the Gap parking lot with the Freeport High School baseball field in front of it. My inquiry question is "How can I use color and texture to concentrate on the emotions of landscapes?" Last year when I was a junior, I spent almost every day in this parking lot, especially on the weekends. It was an easy place for my friends and I to meet up, and many other people did the same thing too. There were so many times my friends and I didn't know what to do, so we ended up sitting in a car for hours just talking and having a good time together. To portray the wistful longing I have for those memories, I decided to make this painting very grey-toned. Almost all the colors I used in this painting were mixed with black to give that saddened tone and contrasted it with the bright cars to spotlight the importance they have. The cars also have the most detail compared to the rest of the painting to bring attention to them, and also highlight the idea I wanted where that's the most important piece of the artwork. I used acrylic paint for this painting because it is my favorite medium and I also think it helps with detailing, which I needed most for the cars. I believe the darkness of the painting brings in the emotion I wanted to resemble, the yearning I have for sitting in a parking lot. This is a very nostalgic piece where I show how I want to go back to those moments so the dark colors make for a sad feeling and the brighter cars ease that feeling while also bringing your attention to them. The painting at first wasn't as dark as I wanted it to be, so I went over everything with a dark wash (diluted black paint) where the edges of the canvas were the darkest and as you got to the middle, it got lighter. I think that helped bring out a gloomy feeling and supported my idea for this piece. This painting also plays a lot with perspective as a lot of composition can be seen. The background including the field and some of the school, the trees on the side, and the cars in the parking lot behind the fence all bring the painting together. I admit, I wasn't sure how I was going to get everything down but decided that the background didn't need to be super detailed because it was not super important, and I wanted the focus to mostly be on the parking lot, and that's what I did by detailing only that part.