The Importance of Beauty

Simply put, I want my thesis to be beautiful. I want people to want to look at it. I want people to enjoy looking at it. However, I do not want to make something that is beautiful for the sake of being beautiful. I want to make something meaningful that people will spend time looking at and thinking about because they enjoy the experience.

There is definitely something to be said for art that visually arrests the viewer, assaults the eyes, and draws out thought through emotional discomfort, but that it not what I want to do.

Thinking about Display: Part 2

While discussing things with Jason, he suggested a variety of ways to think about how to create distance and closeness with an audience. One suggestion I really liked was layering elements with varying degrees of clarity in order to let the audience experience certain elements on a more detailed level and others on a level of impression. If I took this approach, I wouldn't have to break my images into multiple panels; instead, they could be layered on top of one another. 

Thinking About Display

While contemplating the display of the paintings I will produce this year, I was thinking specifically about how a display can reflect what is going on in the actual artworks. I sketched this image to visualize my thinking.

If the paintings on the ends were more closed off imagery (less open to vulnerability), it would make sense not to allow the viewer to become intimate with the paintings by drawing near. By removing distance with the audience in the center, the viewers would be able to be be most intimate with that painting, but would also be forced to be more intimate with one another as they would be funneled into a smaller space.

I don't know if my display would employ a technique like this, but I definitely found the thought appealing, especially for my subject matter.

Exploration: Materials and Theme

This is a recent experimentation mixing used paper paint palettes and gold leaf. The leaf is used as an accent around the dried paint to frame or adorn it. My exploration in thinking here was using a "valuable" material to celebrate the mistakes and happy accidents of painting. Although usually invisible in finished paintings, the artist's palette shows the artist's thoughts, mistakes in mixing, wasted material, and even spills here and there. It's an unapologetic documentation of the process of painting, and to me it's beautiful. This exercise for me was about seeing beauty is something raw or imperfect.

At my advisor's suggestion, I have begun experimenting further with some abstract figures I invented for his Multilevel Figure Drawing course in the Spring of 2016. These forms are made from leftover palettes that have been cut out; arms, legs, and heads made with ink and carsick give the different creatures feeling and action.

This particular composition felt to me to me like a kind of formation of someone. Gestation is also a word that comes to mind as it is set in a shallow box that envelops it slightly in its curled up position. This is a relevant exploration of my theme of vulnerability because people often think of "formative" times in a person's life as the most delicate and arguable most important periods.

I also decided to try mixing in more naturalistic forms to see how the abstractions could interact with them. This composition seems to teeter between anxiousness and hope. Perhaps the abstracted figures could be representation of the man's psyche. Perhaps they are representations of how he sees others. This is a vague train of thought, but it relevant to my interest in using the human figure.

 Timeline: ?

This week we turned in a provisional timeline for the BFA projects. This was enlightening, but not in a good way. More than anything it showed me that I had no idea what this year looks like in the long term.

Basically, I need to find all the specific dates for elements of the BFA projects are due and compile them in a neat and logical manner and tape it to my wall. In my studio. In my room. I need to see it often and let it fuel my progress.

Vulnerability on Display

This image is a still from Marina Abramovic's performance The Artist is Present. In this piece, strangers would walk up to her table and take a seat across from her. The two people would then silently watch one another, examining one another. The photo above is a still of the moment during the performance when she is confronted unexpectedly with meeting a past lover.  Over and over I have heard people gush about how beautiful this particular moment is.

Why?  Why is it beautiful?  What is so wonderful or desirable in this moment that so many people find inspiring?  One might argue that it is how vulnerable they are with one another.

Both come to this moment knowing not knowing how the other will react. The stakes are especially high here because they risk this level of vulnerability in front of an audience. I think that people find beauty in this moment of vulnerability because it is a show of trust and of a deep connection that transcends distance and time. Despite their time apart, both find the strength and trust to non-verbally express their emotions in this moment.

For my own project, looking at this piece is inspirational because I want to talk about vulnerability as an ideal to strive for, something that makes us more equal by exposing our inner selves.

The Right Mindset

This post is not about my project; instead, it's about my mindset. Producing a BFA thesis project is a big deal. It will be a lot of work. It will result in long nights. It will not always go as planned.

Today, I lined up these progress images of my current painting project for Jason Lahr's Multilevel Painting course, and the comparison actually surprised me. In the early stages of this project, I lamented to my professor that I didn't know how to paint, that everything was trial and error. Now that sounds silly to my own ears. Of course I know how to paint; trial and error taught me how.