Artist Statement 2010

Boo to Fridays! I know most y'all love Fridays, but today is my long day and the start of my three days of work in a row(every weekend). :( I guess that is what happens when you work at a museum. Any who, I'm here to make my next post. These next works started to change my idea of how I view portraits and brought on a whole new way of thinking. I really enjoy the concept of portraits, but I am also fascinated with the history of the tangible picture itself. It's this thing you can cherish keeping that specific moment, time, and place with you. The other great thing about a photograph is over time it can fade, curl, and crack. It all relates to your past. So when I was thinking of my thesis for this series, I wanted to try express the past through the use of materials with hints of the image showing. Like a faded memory. Since this is the start of my main body of work through college, I thought I would share one of my first artist statement relating to beginning.

Artist Statement

2010-11

      Evolving from the first work in the series, which is based solely on viewing the image in pixilation form. I found it to be cold and uninvolved with the person in the image. I wanted to give my work more meaning than just making the pixilated picture. So I expressed human characteristic and emotion through a system of pixilation, and color. Each pixel is given a personality by obscuring it through deterioration to evoke a sense of loss. A loss of time through layers of deteriorated levels of paints, mediums and materials. In each image I wanted to be able to give a sense of the persons characteristic without being to literal. Colors convey the characteristic traits of the individual depicted in the image. Allowing the viewer to see the environment of the work and not just the image itself. An expression of human characteristics and emotion within squares invites viewers to look deeper than just squares or the image on a canvas.

The first work is a self-portrait completed in 2010. It is acrylic on canvas and the size is 18"x24." It is the painting I'm referring to in the artist statement.