Abstract:
My topic for this project is my struggle with feeling overwhelmingly personally responsible for fixing the injustices in the world. This feeling of responsibility often leads me feeling over-emotional and immobilized, therefore adding to the cycle of feeling like I am not doing enough. Specifically, lately I have been faced with lots of ignorance and misogyny regarding women’s rights. I hopefully through painting around this topic, I will work through these feelings I have been facing and learn how best to deal with them, therefore taking back some power through the process. I learned a lot through the research process that I hope to convey in the final piece. Specifically, I was most inspired by the work of Alexandra Levasseur and hope to incorporate aspects of her work.
The painting itself will be a self-portrait. I usually shy away from figures in my work, so I want to take this assignment as an opportunity to challenge myself. The piece will hold lots of symbolism and will have heavy brushstrokes and surrealist stylization. It will be feminine and confrontational. I want it to convey a sense of feeling small, powerless, and overwhelmed by outside forces.
Visual Materials and Methodologies:
I definitely want the piece to be in oil paint. After starting our still life paintings I realized how much I’ve missed working in oil. I also think that it will allow for the most experimentation in this piece, which I am looking forward to. It will be medium-sized, I’m thinking 3×4 ft on either stretched canvas or wood panel, for the sake of transportation it will most likely be canvas. I would ideally like it to be bigger than medium-scale, but in terms of transportation and drying time, I think working any bigger could be problematic. Also, since I am challenged myself with new subject matter in this piece, I think it will be helpful to not have as big of a surface to work on, that way I can really concentrate on getting everything right.
As for the composition, I have been working with different symbols and imagery and developed a few compositions which I will attach below.
