The artist that I researched was Wolfgang Tillmans, a german photographer known for his photographs of the german club scene in the 80s. Much of his work breaks the norm as far as composition and subject matter goes. My artist, Alice Neel was an American portrait artist, whose works revolved a great deal around local new yorkers, ranging from the everyday person to actors, writers and politicians. In their own ways, each artist was a documentarian.

Realizing the similarities between Neel and Tillmans was very interesting to me, considering the differences in their lives– Tillmans was born in 1968 in West Germany, while Neel was born in 1900 in Pennsylvania. 

The concept that Adrian and I came up with drew inspiration from the documentarian aspect of each of our artists– we wanted to show student life through a series of portraits and still lives. I chose to paint the figures in the portraits in a style reminiscent of Alice Neel’s, while adopting some of the strangeness seen in Tillmans’ work.

I really like the emotion that came out in the painted pieces I made, but I would have liked to created clearer cohesion between my portraits and Adrian’s still lives.

Adrian took all the photographers for this project, while I waited and drew over the files he sent me. This process worked, but was slightly stressful because I had to rely on Adrian to finish his part of the piece before I could begin mine. Ultimately, I’m proud of what we made together and fortunate that we were able to get it all done.