Drawing / Imaging – Language: LET’S GET DIGITAL: Activating the Personal Object, with Cultural Context in Digital Space

STATEMENT:

The work began as an assemblage of objects gathered from my immediate surroundings that either had something of a personal significance, were aesthetically pleasing when combined, or both. I made quick sketches outline the basic shapes and cast shadows present. In my final version, I used charcoal to trace the contours, cast shadows, and represented some of the textures (such as the liquid in the perfume bottle and grooves in the lock) through simple lines. This resulted in a series of subdivided sections in the image of varying tone and value. This guided my process of collaging the painting into the line drawings. The painting I selected for this collage is titled Inferno. The piece is by Franz Von Stuck, an oil on canvas piece from 1907. The use of color in the painting is masterful, with the deep shimmering blues of the serpent, the touch of yellow in its eyes, and the encircling flames all blended into an otherwise dark palette. I’ve encountered this piece in the MET a few times now and I’ve always found myself strangely drawn to it, with it holding a certain inexplicable magnetism distinct from other museum items. I felt it would ideal to pair with objects that held in them a similar allure. I paired sections of the painting with sections of the objects with similar values or shading. The result reflects this, a dark jigsaw of tonality with some of the more striking features of the painting (the shrieking faces for example) on display. When moving to the color collage portion of the assignment, I first selected a range of colors from the piece and laid them out in palette document. Out of these dozen colors, I selected a combination I felt would best correspond to one another as well as demonstrate the range of shadow and tone in the original line drawing. For my final digital collage, I combined both of these methods, using the same guiding principals to create a blend of form, color, and collage.