My initial intentions with this project were to explore my previous ideas of home in a more in-depth and specific way and to accomplish a piece that was authentic in its exploration of the idea of home. I wanted to visually represent home in terms of how it relates to me, in my life now. To do this I started with an archive of my family history, stemming back to my great grandparents. I collected old photos and written memories to create an image and idea of these people who I have never met, and finding the ways that they might inform me as a person. From here I started with painting portraits of my great grandparents on objects that remind me of home. As I started down this path I found myself exploring tangential ideas, based in the imagery of home and what my memories of the places of lived manifested through drawing and recollection.
The main problems I ran into during this process were organizing my thoughts and ideas, and pairing them down into a visual narrative that made sense to me. I found that I had lots of ideas that did not fit within the time frame of the project, so I had to let a lot of them go and focus on the ideas I felt would make the most sense for what I had originally wanted to accomplish.
From that process my main issues and goals became clear. I was struggling with how to represent and do justice to my great grandparents while also figuring out what “home” means to me. From there my goals became tying together my life and self right now as it’s informed by a past that I don’t necessarily know how to conceptualize. I wanted my final pieces to be reminiscent, nostalgic, and an authentic representation of myself as an artist today.
To accomplish this, I had to work on planning out all aspects of the pieces I wanted to make. I knew I wanted to use objects as a starting point for the body of work. I started by picking out objects that remind me of home, cigarette packs, a milk carton, a metal tin, etc. I used these as the base for the portraits I painted of my great grandparents. For the actual paintings, I was heavily influenced by outsider artists such as Howards Finster and R.A Miller. In terms of composition and color, these artists were my references. I used acrylic paint and mostly primary color to actualize the portraits. From there I decided to go back to the idea of “home” and explore that through visualizing houses and printing them. I think the choice to etch these images was important in terms of how much time is spent with each image. I also thought about the process, and how its nearly impossible through the process of etching to completely maintain the integrity of the original image. This conceptually tied to the abstraction of home through memory.
This year felt like a culmination of exploring interests and gaining knowledge that helped me find more specificity in my practice as an artist. Every piece of writing, artwork, or discussion made clear to me what I liked and what I was not interested in. I think it was important that I explored multiple forms of content and conceptual ways of thinking before limiting myself stylistically. Essentially everything I took in this semester informed me in some way.
The greatest challenge I’ve had as an artist this semester is finding a place within the fine arts world where I feel my work is relevant and recognized. I’ve tended to box myself into the illustrative side of fine arts, mainly working with (as fore-mentioned) comics and more traditionally illustrative imagery in my pieces. I’ve been trying not only to expand my comfort zone as an artist in order to explore other mediums and processes, but also to learn to see my work within the context of fine art and what that means for me as an artist moving forward and into the world of fine arts.
As I move forward as an artist I want to keep exploring and focusing on process. Now that I feel that I found some specificity in my influences and style I feel that I can now really delve into creating a body of work that is coherent. With that being said, I want to keep challenging myself and stepping out of my comfort zone. I want to approach my practice and work openly but with intention.
