Date of Submission

Spring 2021

Academic Program

Studio Arts

Project Advisor 1

Ken Buhler

Project Advisor 2

N/A

Abstract/Artist's Statement

Making art, whether it be painting or sculpture, is how I am able to escape reality for a moment. I lose feeling in my body and have my focus directed all towards my hands and what they are doing. I discovered that finding ways to include certain ideas and feelings from my reality into my work adds a layer, conceptually and physically, to the surface. I attempt to use enough reality to imply an object or scene, but not enough to dictate what it should look like or how the viewer should feel. I find art that suggests a mixture of mundane and mysterious concepts always attracts my attention. There is this sense of awkwardness and stillness that makes unreal work feel more real, while remaining a dramatized or exaggerated scene or moment. If the work has some sort of mystery about it, all the better. I admire and appreciate being presented with questions that either no one has the answers to or being left in a situation where the question is more fascinating than the answer. When making my own works of art, I am aiming to create something that raises questions that are not necessarily meant to be answered. I think of critics and art viewers, myself included, as detectives trying to solve a mystery when observing artwork. Putting in specific details into the scenes or objects is my way of leaving hints that may or may not be used in order to answer these questions. I pay close attention to the surface of my paintings, spending a lot of time working and reworking it. Layers of built up canvas, paper, paint, plaster, plastics and more shards of canvas tend to dictate or have a substantial impact on the imagery or subject matter. In my work I find myself either suppressing or indulging my own desire to associate personal narrative to the visual information that is present in the material and process. Construction, destruction and reconstruction are symbiotic elements in my creative process that allow for the image to shift back and forth from abstraction to representation, truth and illusion, and personal and the conventional.

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