BRAINSTORMING:
After reading Einsteins Dreams, I was inspired by two specific chapters that discussed how the essence of an extraordinary moment is the rarity of it, and how a moment like that loses value as it is stretched out or repeated. As a result, I decided to base my final project on this idea.
Inspired by two chapters of Einstein’s Dreams by Alan Lightman, I created a series of three pieces that each had slight variations. The idea of how a moment’s value is heavily related to its rarity fascinated me, so I decided to explore the bittersweetness of re-experiencing a moment but also knowing that it will lose it’s passion the more it’s forced to continue. I translated this into a visual work by depicting the same person at different levels of emotion and passion, though she’s seemingly in the same setting. For each piece, I first created a graphite portrait, scanned it, and placed it with a collaged background made up of illustrations and quotes from the book itself. In the first and most passionate piece, she presses on her forehead in a moment in which I intended to portray overwhelming emotion. As well as the immediately apparent intensity on her face, I varied how chaotic the backgrounds are through the uniformity of the text, through different amounts of layering, and through the opacity, therefore decreasing the value of blacks and greys as emotion decreases.
Throughout the project, I struggled to make the connection to varying passion and emotion clear, and I wasn’t sure whether or not the connection to Lightman was strong enough. Originally, I contemplated using acrylics or pastels to use color and texture to match the state of mind, but not only would the mediums themselves be much more difficult to seem polished, but the message wouldn’t translate in the way I wanted it to. This is why I decided to use text and collage as a bridge between the book and the pieces they inspired. Aside from this, I decided that a little ambiguity wasn’t a problem because the audience would be people of my age who constantly experience emotions that are intensified not only because of how much is going on at this time of our lives but also simply because we’re young.
Essentially, I wanted to capture the interaction between emotion, chaos, and the temporary element of extraordinary or even awful moments. Although it was a process in which I created a lot of work that I hated in order to create something I didn’t, I learnt a lot about my use of different mediums and I even learnt new skills and methods of going about creating artwork.
PROCESS:
I first selected reference images with varying levels of emotion and drew them in graphite…
I then collaged them with quotes and illustrations from the book in photoshop…
FINAL PRODUCT:
