I’m leaving it in bullet points because I’m burnt out and creating funny transitions is hard.
Artist & Artwork of Interest
• Starry Night over the Rhone, Farmhouse in Provence, Olive Trees by van Gogh
o Symmetry created by leading lines made by objects or with thick strokes/contrasting colors
o Realism but with an other-worldly feel
• The Love Embrace of the Universe, the Earth, Myself, Diego and Senor Xolotl, the Broken Column, Frida Kahlo
o The symbolism in her self portraits, and the darker emotions/memories she portrays through them always looks like processing and healing to me
• Those portraits that were silhouettes with symbols of the person’s personality inside it. Someone posted it in a live session and I’m still trying to find it again. Pretty sure it was a black artist, the work was digital and very floral. Heeeelp!
• The art I’ve always identified most with is slightly whimsical, liminal, a maximalist subject OR a minimalist subject made with a combination of mediums. I like having identifiable subjects but by trying to capture a feeling rather than their likeness.
Personal Artwork
• Plan to create “Isolation Doesn’t Heal” – a work I started sketching months ago. It really started as a visual representation of a safe space and spiraled from there. I’ve been making notes for months, picking out little ideas from works I’d seen that really struck a chord. Over time the little pieces just fell into place, and I started seeing this whole piece instead of idea notes for later.
• I was planning to make an oil painting, but I actually think I want it to be a digital print first, with soft or dark colors and lines for the silhouette/portrait, and then pops of vibrantly colored and thick textured paint over the ‘safe objects/people’
• Alternatively: Photograph of an octopus I took at an aquarium. It was a simple subject, but the way he was positioned created a beautiful flow of lines, and his coloring made him stand out from the rest of the tank. After some digital alterations it looked startling and is easily my favorite photo. Don’t tell my kid.
• When I entered this program I hadn’t yet developed my own style. I pulled influences from a lot of artists, and I know I had patterns in my work, but I was constantly making art through trial and error or accidental magic. This piece is one of the few that I’ve planned and sketched a dozen times before I entered the “perfectionist” stage(yay ADHD), and I think that’s because it had more personal meaning, and was more of my own techniques, not just something I saw and wanted to try.
Analysis
• Liminal space, high contrast colors, framing, a focus on symbolism or more abstract presentations of real life, emphasis on impressions rather than perspective
• When taking photos I rely heavily on framing. A lot of van Gogh’s art uses parallel or leading lines to create the perspective. The colors and strokes of the paint create depth and direction.
• Barthes’ definition of connotative meanings were of note, there will be a lot of symbolism- signals and signifiers. Many of them will be more of a societal agreement than a strict definition. I don’t know of any specific historical connection, but I recently found out that a few of van Gogh’s pieces had marks from bugs that crawled across them, and it’s made me feel closer to him and his pieces.
• My work is pretty random across mediums, but this piece specifically will be a mixed media piece: digital and acrylic paint. Van Gogh obviously didn’t have Rebelle or a drawing tablet, and my piece will have a lot of negative space and darker shading than his more vibrant pieces do.
• His work always created a feeling for me. Whether it was the texture of the paint itself or just the flow of the lines in the painting, I would look at it and imagine my fingers on the rough vase or the wind that was blowing. Sometimes my art does that, sometimes what I think I’m seeing doesn’t translate to what I make. Now that I’m settling into a style and with more intentional work I’m excited to see that change.