Inquiry and discovery

The ideas and goals of my practice have too many components and ideas that reach farther than how I have been actualizing them in my paintings. I think that the paintings I did in Core Studio 2D can be a series in my arts practice, but I need to continue to study and experiment how people experience the values they build in their lives to find better ways to communicate my sought after experience. With helpful input from the critique I realized that my paintings might only interest a select few. People are interested in what artists have to say. In my paintings I am not blatantly making any sort of statement, claim, or raising any kind of question, I am, trying to, offer an experience that I hope will act as a sort of catalyst of understanding for my audience. I am letting the audience guide themselves through the familiarity and form of the paintings and discover things on their own and at their own pace. This is not an ideal way of getting through to everyone, which is something that I want in my work.

My next step is to experiment more with a 3D aspect of my work, I think my understanding of how we interact with objects will expand and in form my painting practice. I also think a more literal and less abstract approach to a new series of paintings could be more approachable and engaging. I think that keeping the hues of the objects that inspire the forms, while making the brushwork more expressive in my paintings could be a key move in building the ambiguity and the familiarity at the same time. I need to make work that is approachable to more people and that gets through the message I’m compared to share in an effective way. Things just exist and we place our own values, meanings, and associations to them. We don’t see anything objectively, everything we see is a summation of ideas and things we associate from previous experiences. Nothing we see is pure. These are some of the notions I want to communicate. You can draw conclusions about these ideas from the way I have talked about my paintings and the experience I am trying to create, but I am not, blatantly, unapologetically getting stating this message or getting it across, like an artist should, at least the kind I want to be. In the paintings I have completed I am more so confusing the audience than jolting their viewing experience, which is not a problem in itself. I don’t have a problem confusing my audience, but this is only a small part of the experience I want to get across.

For project my intention was to continue with the abstract series I started in project 2. I wanted to continue engaging with the paint and hopefully learn in the process what it is that makes us assume and value things about certain forms. A key part of continuing my practice is to study and observe the behaviors and object interactions of myself and people I encounter. I want people to see my works, recognize and assign their own means to forms and reinstall a sense of wonder and objectiveness in the objects around us. The same way a young child is just as likely to be entertained by household objects, as they are the toys meant for them to play with. I want to them to step back and realize the way they build layers of meaning to understand the world, and how everything we know is labeled by ourselves. Things just exist and we place our own meanings on to them. I want to visually replicate the sensation of semantic satiation, when someone says a word repeatedly until the sounds of the word lose the meaning. You begin to hear your own language and actions of speaking for what it is; you are an animal making sounds. Not too long ago I had an experience walking through Tompkins Square Park where I saw mother pigeon with group of around 10 baby pigeons following. The pigeons were very small, round, and fluffy and were traveling in a tight group. This small group of ball like pigeons made me gag at the sight of them. For some reason fact they looked like little balls that were closely moving together in a group visually reminded me of a group of puff ball fungi, pimples, and other, personally unpleasant, organic forms. This was my first experience with trypophobia or a similar condition. In this moment I subconsciously saw the general form of the pigeons and associated it with similar visual experience. This is something I want to give my audience. I want them to acknowledge we don’t see everything objectively, and that what we see is a summation of the literal visuals, and all the associations our mind places in relation to what we see.

For my painting itself I tried to bring a much gritty tone to it. I didn’t use any white, the forms I tried to build much darker and muddier than my previous piece. I intend to abstract the forms that inspire me in the composition so that the piece sits like a still life, seems familiar, but is abstracted past the point being recognized. Humans recognize things by color as well as form, which is the reason behind my choice of such saturated, vibrant colors. I want to take the forms outside their usual context. I want to get the audience to unknow what it is that they believe is familiar or important. Like when you a repeat a word and it becomes meaningless, I want them to realize that the meanings and value system they’ve built up don’t exist. There is no right or wrong, objects just exist and things just happen.