Ready for Overkill

One of three photomontages that will be used as a jumping-off point. March 2013.

I really enjoy the process of adding, subtracting, and shifting around that painting allows me to do. With this future work, I plan to question and challenge the edges of a canvas. What I had learned from the tests is how very crucial this subtractive element is to the paintings, and how this adds the sharp contrast of order vs. chaos. They have helped me come to one of the many solutions I must make in this endeavor. There are possibilities for the subject matter to spill off of the surface being that it is so full.

I want to propose a plan for three large works on canvas that will potentially include oil paints and enamels, collaged elements, and found objects. I plan to use tar in these works due to its sculptural qualities and references to tarring and feathering. I cannot yet say how far the materials will descend off of the canvas; ironically I plan to have no plan for that aspect. Once I’ve had “my full” of art making on the object, it will be done. This is the part that is most exciting to me; what I do not know. The important thing is that I am taking an enjoyable process and plan to fill, and “spill” this work off of the edges of the canvas until I am physically exhausted. 

Painting of photomontage. April 2013.

Overdose of...Fun?

"Carnivale"

There is something about the throwing up; (bear with me on this) the reflex that tells the body to stop putting excess amounts, or rotten things, into it. People have triggers so that they physically know when or what is too much. It is possible for the eye too, and the brain suffers the consequences. There is something terrifying about being out of control; loss of the sense of knowing when something is overdone or filled to the brim. Tanning too much, Overdosing on drugs, or the essence of being sore from too much sexual or physical activity. What if these triggers did not exist? What if people could just eat and eat and eat and drink forever?

Sculpture-Drawings

Chronic Condition

This piece started out as looking foreign to my usual work. I am a fan of sculptural aspects taking part in 2-D work. The making of contemporary art is interdisciplinary. It is a relief to know there are not strict boundaries, because every kind of art making shares the same mental and transubstantial goal--from the mind, through the hands, and into existence. I know painting. However, undergoing a mental or physical process of another discipline facilitates high levels of dynamism. In this piece, I was craving that structure, mobility, gravity, and believability that sculpture has to offer.

This drawing captures my worries pertaining to internal health and bodily condition. The personal struggles I have experienced have been quite unusual as well as chronic. The temporary reason for constant paranoia hangs, and weighs less than the left side on the scale. That black square is menacing, especially with its visceral membrane. It represents future pain.

In Response to Critique

Marie Antoinette

I have to say, “break out the be-dazzler” was the most satisfying suggestion I have heard in a critique thus far. But, why? My plan is to follow what exactly my work calls for, since my intentions rely so much on material choice, and the choices intertwine together and present themselves in a way to facilitate delightfully confused reactions of an audience. I say this because the general feeling of the room did not seem concerned with why there was confusion. There seemed to be no attempt to “figure it out”.  Excitement is an extremely crucial element of my work. I rephrase this statement as: I have to be excited in the moment about creating.  It is significant that my movements are exciting, orchestrating layer upon layer of girlish explosion on a surface. 

               I noticed that the two-thirds of the critique was spent talking about the formal properties, which then led into discussion of content readings and what formal elements I could change to help drive my visuals at a closer parallel to my intentions. It was a very fulfilling discussion; my pen never left the paper, and people were commenting constantly, which is good because silence is my worst fear in critiques.

Comments were made about the energy and the elements of collage and drawing. The switching of materials when I work allows for the flow of excitement and release from the monotony I sometimes feel when I work with one material. The process becomes somewhat spontaneous in this way.  There was a comment about the jewels looking Three-Dimensional, due to my working directly from the digital collage and the sequential flow deriving from this planned element.

Collected descriptions popped out during the interpretation phase of critique: Arabesque, chaotic, overwhelming, and “star of David.” The star in the middle seemed to have more weight in the work as the duct tape (solid color) stars were seen as arbitrary. The cartoonish stars were said to advance on the composition. These two create an interesting dialogue, and I wonder if it has to do with associations out in the world.

I would like to expand on this in anticipation of the debatable significance of the star in the middle.

 I grew up catholic, and reference to Judaism was made in the critique. I find this rather interesting because this star appears in both religions and these religions are so radically different, and yet have respect for each other. I am intrigued by the superstitions involving 3 A.M., considered by some to be a “spiritually active” time.

               Again, I find many contradictions in my work down to the very core of what my surroundings have been. I am surrounded by ideals in society that generally look down upon lavish living and overabundance. Why is this? This certainly wasn’t the case in other societies. The history of the religion I grew up with was the reason for some of the most lavish art and architecture of them all.

               This baroque art and architecture class that I have been taking has had an influence on my work—the aesthetics of Bernini, Borromini, Caravaggio, etc. are mind-blowing. The history lessons have bolstered my thoughts on the subjects of intentions I may consider, but haven’t done much more than that. I find relatable content in the work of Lari Pittman, Isabel Sesma, and more recently, Karen Kilimnik’s head-on approach to depicting the already tirelessly depicted.

               Lari Pittman has been inspiring my work since I saw his interview on Art 21. His work satisfies my eye with intense color, layering, and busily involved shapes. They are illustrative and embellished. To me, his work comments on everything. I had the privilege of meeting him when he came to SAIC for his artist lecture in the fall. Both he and his work had an odd and humble mystique, and I cannot compose one clear statement that would explain his work. It does, though, reference sexuality and homosexuality in many, many ways. Even the depictions of furniture and numbers, mixed in with the sexual objects, seem sexual. 

               I am not crazy about the idea of painting badly, although I trust that the way I might want to paint badly might contain some hint to my experience. In this way, I could inform an audience of my knowledge and then blatant decision to muffle that knowledge in efforts to focus more on the idea of abundance rather than artistry. I am so ready to cake on the paint, suffocate with sequins, and blind with gold. I plan to focus on doing that for now.  I am uninterested in curating a project though, as it is important that my work be done by my hands. I discovered this from my earlier writing with the translation of the digital montage to the painting. 

How Time Effects Process

I started this series of works over the summer, and to revisit them makes for a different experience. This piece started off when I worked at a cupcake shop over the summer at home in Virginia. I was working at the shop’s booth at a festival, and I snapped a shot of the bundle of cloth decoration in the corner of the tent in between waiting on customers. This image intrigued me, so I further edited it while listening to “Nights in White Satin” by the Moody Blues. I included a photo of a drawing that I had doodled during a class in the spring, anxiously awaiting summer and riding the wave of spring revival. I layered a few shots of lace I had taken earlier in the year into the image, and I looked at it. A lot of this process was merely gazing at the picture and letting it be an escape, just as it would be for further viewers. I saw delicious tropical colors that confirmed the weather in June in Virginia and the essence of beautiful airy summer.

When I returned to this image in February, I printed it out large and noticed an area of the picture that was very intriguing to me. It hit me as a window to another dimension that my mind had either created or recognized; from my process I can say a little bit of both. This image was pleasurably and delightfully minimalist but it could not stand alone due to it’s pixilated nature, so I did a pen and ink drawing mimicking its edges and composition, and layered that on top. With this I bring together my refreshing relationship with summer, and definitive and tiresome repetition of winter.

Uncomfortable Contradictions

This painting is an end product to a sporadic sequence of unanticipated steps, which ended recently with attempts to brighten and invigorate. It started with a few up-close shots of fabric I had in my possession: a neck scarf, large costume jewelry, and a lace tablecloth with a floral pattern. I edited them to the point of flatness, extracting traces of shadow and texture. I layered the photos and composed the costume jewels around the rose patterns on the lace. I painted the image because I felt it needed further experimentation; painting being my preferred form of translation for this image, giving it grandeur, presence, and the demand for attention that it was lacking as a digital image. The digital image was simply not satisfying all my senses.

I bring a plethora of contradictions to this work. Contradictions that, if not addressed, would mean a weak part in the work.

I am interested in conveying drama of theatrics; costume wear and extravagance. I cannot fully have contempt for extravagance because I enjoy it. A painting of roses entertains the idea of fake riches and the ridiculous, but it is as ridiculous to paint the alluring and ornate as it is to decorate with them. A painting itself can even contribute to this decorating. This work does not technically critique extravagance at all, but it also does not seem to glorify it because it is overly extravagant. The reflections are overly stated, and the colors overly saturated. 

“…An iconoclastic approach, sometimes expressed in deliberate primitivism. Yet in a sense this type of movement is an attempt to roll back to the tradition of vision to the earlier phase of innocence, the paradise before history. These two movements, though opposite, compliment one another.”-McEvilly

Another contradiction in this work is the way in which the content is being represented. The primitively shaped stars, recognizable but intentionally uneven, suggest a desperation to communicate and represent. They are graphic, but hold weight on a painting and in “real life”. Duct tape and paint proves to be a dynamic medium pair that refuses my previous digital efforts with this piece.

I enjoyed the process, I feel as if I defaced meaningless objects and gave them immortality through painting. This immortality is problematic because the objects are still meaningless. Meaning can be drawn from the formal aspects; the linen stretched on wooden bars true to tradition. Wet on wet shades of green to depict transparency and red dry brush to imply drooping and folding petals. Vine charcoal to confirm the shape of the mark, whether right or wrong, I confirm it.

The use of this traditional material in this work is not used according to tradition. The fragile charcoal is driven, crumbling and diminishing, yet leaves a bold mark where its’ willed on top of the paint.

The vertical black lines in the background suggest a panoramic space. The lines huddle together in the middle and spread gradually out over a decadent shade of red, which sits under a floral parabola.

I started to make many aesthetically-based decisions once it had taken several steps in painting form, because creating a sublime essence of heightened beauty became of utmost importance to me at this point, and it drove me to manipulate the painting towards having a flashy quality. I forced the vanity I felt for this painting, and I believe it manifested itself as the answer to the question of meaning I had for this work, and I am not sure how I feel about it.

I proceeded to study photos of roses until I could create a generic cut out of one. I numbered each cherry red paper petal cutout in a spiral, the shape of nature. Ironically, there is nothing natural about the accompanying processes or concepts.

I titled this work Three A.M. because it is the time I felt so bold as to declare it finished. The work had finished the journey from items, back and forth from my head to my process, to a fully realized image composed of traditional materials.

“…All these decisions by the artist carry content quite as much as form.”-McEvilly

It would be interesting to entertain the idea of “content arising from the material (McEvilly)" of which this artwork was made. I see digital as the opposite of traditional. Working digitally on this work felt clean and detached, like I needed to prove somehow that I owned the image. Once the image was composed of traditional materials, the graphic aesthetic manifested in the painted version. I do not know how often artists use traditional materials as content, but I hypothesize that that is exactly what I did with this work.

Quotations from Art & Discontent by Thomas McEvilly.