Jen has amazing painting skills and I love looking at this painting of hers in particular. She's able to pick and choose where she wants to get super specific about what she is painting, for instance the baby dolls, and they look exactly like an actual doll you could hold. Then she does a 180 and has super graphic elements like her pixelated clouds or the flat more abstracted shapes that completely contrast her modeled portions. My favorite skill that I admire the most is her trompe-l'œil. The paper dino and the duck taped cloud blow my mind because even up close they look like paper that I could touch! What I got most from her critique is the importance of having a cohesive idea or style that brings a body of work together. While I can understand that all her work is about going against our first impression of something (i.e. gender/material/image/2Dness/ 3Dness), all her paintings are so different and the ideas are so far apart from each other that without an explanation it can be difficult to see how the works relate to one another. IK's work on the other hand was very cohesive. All the paintings are tied together both in subject and concept. What interested me more was his approach to a painting. He used photographs much in the same way I do, we use them as information to start a painting but we don't copy it detail for detail. He talked about how the photograph was first important for the composition of the piece and then the bare bones would be used to start the painting. I think its similar to the way I start a painting with a highly detailed sketch that I then project up onto the canvas.
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Some of the sketches and under painting work i've collected in my studio this week! I'm trying to think more about the surreal spaces I want to put my figure in and how to keep it connected in a narrative form.... also bought a lot of new acrylic paints to start working with. I'm also excited to be working on my first panel piece (the triptych)!
This series has been slow in development over the past two semesters and the direction that I have wanted to take it has not been clear. Lucky for me though, each painting I make for this series gets me closer and closer to understanding what I am getting at with my art. I want to tell a story that starts based in reality and slowly gets more and more surreal as this character faces her deepest insecurities and demons.
Whenever I see my own work in a show I somehow feel full of pride while simultaneously wanting to avoid the spot light as much as possible. This feeling really hasn't evolved much throughout my journey as a BFA but what has changed is my ability to talk about my work when I am asked about it. Each painting I create helps me to solidify what I'm trying to get at in my work which makes it a lot easier to talk about my work without prepping a two paragraph statement printed out for people to reference.
Not only seeing my own work in the gallery, but also all the work of my peers around it is also an amazing feeling. Being so deeply immersed in the art world is a blessing. We're all able to talk about our work in how it relates not only to us personally but also in a big-picture sense. We're able to share techniques and ideas with each other. What I think is the coolest part is that I get to see my peers grow and develop as artists and I get the privilege of knowing them before they "become somebody" in the art world. Another critique, another Tuesday, another slice of Little Caesars pizza.
Julio's work stuns me with his attention to detail and his obsession with mimicking life with paint. As pointed out by the professors, all his work act like portraits. Even in piles of junk he picks an object of focus and makes it into a character that we can draw conclusions about. It makes me think about how I try and draw focus to odd things in my own work. The little things I pick and choose to put great detail and time into versus the areas that have little thought or effort in them. Ben's work on the other hand left me breathless. His work this semester blew me away and captured my attention fully. His figures are more generalized in the way of what one would think a figure to be. They display motion, feeling, and a sense of space without adhering to the rules of anatomy. This is something I stumbled on in my work last semester and have been trying to understand better moving into new pieces. Instead of accidentally creating my unique figures, I need to find a way to create my own understanding of how the figures should look and feel in their space. "How does it feel to have your own show?" The answer is stressful and unbelievably rewarding. The logistics of getting in the proposal, collecting peoples work, setting up the show, coordinating with what feels like a billion people, publicizing, putting on the show, and tear down is exhausting. But every late night and each cup of coffee that went into Tevin sleeps was worth it. Maybe I would have different thoughts on this if the show was unsuccessful, but thats not what happened here (thank goodness). I constantly had new people coming through the gallery doors asking me and congratulating me on the show. It was exhilarating watching and interacting with my audience and seeing how they interacted with my show. I can't wait till I can send in my next proposal for a show at the Fuller!
The MFA artwork always blows me away with their creativity and uniqueness. Not one piece of art in there looked anything like the other. Pieces that I can still recall to memory were Su A Chae's corner where her paintings not only hung on the wall, but also in free space where they could be interacted with. Her use of fabric gave her paintings a unique sense of texture and physical tension between colors as opposed to visual tension. Another's work was Dan Woerner's who montaged footage of people falling into an endless loop. Not only was it seamlessly stringed together, it was humorous. As a viewer I stood there waiting for the person to hit the floor but instead I was treated to a new person falling through a new surface.
When I attend the critiques of the MFA painters, the thing I try and take away from it how I can apply what they do to my own work. I think about the questions the professors pose as if they were directed at me instead. Gen's approach to her female figure interests me in the way she chooses to highlight different aspects of the body depending on what the figure is doing. There is also no attention to detail in the face, which is something I am drawn to as well. I think this choice makes the viewer read the body language and surroundings of the figure to grasp whats happening. Mitch's work on the other hand makes me think about how I paint. He uses the paint (and various other items) as a material with its own personality that he guides around the canvas. I mostly think of him while painting in the way of reminding myself to free up my hand and not take the image so seriously, rather allowing the paint to bring its own qualities into my painting that I may not think to put there.
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Who is Lexie?Just a fourth semester painting BFA trying her best. Archives
November 2017
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