GO GO GO!

Here's the rest of the paintings, I have another little one that may or may not be used for my "poster" of my show outside the slusser gallery during the actual senior thesis show but it's still wet in the painting studio and not finished so I don't have a photo of it. I put my work up this saturday!! All of the backings are on the paintings, everything is dry, and everything is photographed and ready to go! So excited! All I need to do now is set up the show, and then work on research and writing my thesis which will be a relief!! So excited about this year coming to a close and can't believe I met my goal of having this many pieces! I'm still debating about using those two other studies in my final show or not or even using them as posters etc. We'll see, I'll ask people on wednesday during class since I've got some time now. Here's the rest of my pieces!

So close to the finish line!

So I've been working mostly on painting itself rather than writing anything for about 3 weeks now and I'm finally done with all of the painting which is awesome and feels amazing. Now I am focusing a lot on figuring out just how to photograph everything and make sure that they texture, lighting, and color is all making sense and doing the paintings justice. So far I think I've done a good job, I decided to photograph them outside rather than inside to avoid glare. I edited the ones I am about to put on here and I personally think they look pretty good. I have only gotten 6 of them photographed though so I've got about 4 more to do. Yay!! Can't wait to be done, ready to focusing on the writing of the actual thesis. Also the colors of these photos when put onto the blog are kind of off and not as saturated as the actual photos that I took along with the actual paintings themselves.

Ready! Set! Paint!

I'm back and ready to work and finish 3 new pieces. I think I'm going to change that red piece in the hallway to a deep plum maroon color and then decide what color to put overtop. I also am going to make a mint colored one I believe and do a bright bright purple drip over it, and then I have one more canvas to work on and hopefully I can get all of these rolling within the next few weeks I have left. I don't see it being difficult, since I'm now really just going with the flow and not over analyzing my painting technique like I have been in the past. Hope it all works out! Gonna be a few all nighters for sure.

Spring Break, Get Back to Work!

So I have everything for my show basically finalized, which is really exciting and kind of takes a bit of the pressure off. However... I have to have all of my work finished and ready to hang by March 31st!!!! Which is soon approaching!! Thankfully I am bringing a piece back from home that is partially done so I will have 6 pieces that are in the works. I got the dimensions from the art director of the common cup as well so I will be doing those measurements soon and visit the site upon arrival back in ann arbor to get a real feel for the space. I am really anxious to see how everything turns out and am glad that I am having my show on Saturday the 14th rather than Friday the 13th with everyone else so I can see their shows and hopefully people will come to mine as well. This year seems honestly like it has just begun and now it is coming to a close. I really need to work on my thesis as well, which I have been tinkering with here and there and have had Miss Spencer help me with! I'm really hoping that everything comes together, I've gotten a real sense of my work I think and have really hoenstly decided that things fall into place, and that is what my work is about, or at least what is has become about. Aesthetics, process, frustrations working themselves out through exploration and experimentation. I'm hoping that everything turns out for the best, and we'll just have to see :)

Feeling sick, but anxious to get to work!

So I'm sick today, been feeling under the weather the past few days, catching all those sniffles and coughs from my peers is always the best. I had a meeting with Jim Cogswell yesterday and honestly it helped me a lot to feel confident and really understand that my work is all experimentation and there are no rules or boundaries. I don't know why, but talking to him really motivated me to continue with my process and push myself to see the possibilities. I think I am just going to focus the rest of my time this year on working on multiple pieces at once, and simply trying to techniques throughout each of them. I want them all to be different, I want them to be chaotic but a beautiful sense of the word. I have a lot of work to do, but I like the direction in which they are going and hearing his feedback really helped. He told me to focus a bit more on my shapes and the way in which I place them on the canvas. I think after my critique at the semester I got a little discouraged and stopped really caring about the way in which I was placing paint on the canvas and just sort of was doing these ovular pieces just to do them. I really think they are obsessive little gems that I enjoy doing, and I don't know why but I don't think that I need to know why. They take different meanings in each of the pieces and I think that this new way in which I am going back into the painting and not being afraid to cover, and lose or gain new perspectives in the work is good. I don't want to get boggled down to one central painting and have them all look alike, I want them each to be their own individual canvases which just so happen to speak to one another within a space. I am having trouble writing my thesis but I think that is because it is all a discovery and I'm not exactly sure how it will all turn out in the end, so writing something so final is a bit difficult for me to do at this point. I understand we need to have a thesis written, but I am just not sure what direction my work is taking and what I am going to keep or what I am going to lose at this point and what exactly is important to me is an end product, I'm just not sure what that will be at this point besides 6-8 large scale abstract oil paintings on canvas. We'll see where it all ends up :) I'm excited and anxious to continue working and hope to be working on 6 pieces as once within the next few days.

Just going with the Anger

I went into my studio yesterday and really decided I absolutely hated the green and orange piece, so I went into with with my palette knife with a completely separate maroon color and started just scrapping it in different places throughout the canvas. This not only got out my anger, but the change in edge relationship was refreshing. I also went back in with a paper towel and rubbed out places so the under painting could show through which are the parts I really enjoy. I'm thinking about doing a wash like this over one complete painting and seeing how that turns out. For me, they all just feel a little too similar in the way in which I execute them and I think that may be why I am getting so bored and frustrated so I've decided to just go with my anger and impulse and just completely regenerate my focus. Hopefully this works.

Frustrations

I'm having such a hard time with my IP and thesis in general. I know that it is "normal" to feel this way, but honestly I'm not used to not knowing what I am going to do or figuring out a solution. I get bored very easily and tend to just go and start a new project but with this I can't do that so I am beginning to feel very trapped and stuck. Part of me just wants to splatter all over these paintings and just completely go off the charts with them and stop thinking all together... then the other part of me realizes that that is a bit crazy and not what IP is all about. I'm getting so frustrated with myself and this lack of confidence and I don't know what I'm doing anymore. I want these colors and painting techniques to wow people, and make them come up to the works and be like "I love it, how was it done, ohh ahhh" But I'm not even getting that vibe so how do I expect others to? I am just very emotionally drained and honestly can't even stand the pieces anymore... I don't know what to do. I thought I had everything all figured out but now I am completely lost and wondering if any of these pieces are even worth showing. Today colin said that she talked to an artist who said they threw away 80 percent of their work... 80 percent would leave me with one painting at the end of all of this, and the space I'm showing for sure does not allot for that... I don't know what to do. I think I'm going to honestly just begin painting colors that I love on top of these paintings and seeing where that goes because at this point I'm just trying to have different variations of colors for each piece and it's just not working for me.
Who knows. Here are some new pictures of the current works. Bllllaaaahhhh!

Photos

I've started working back into my larger pieces and am currently working on the three larger pieces at once (blue, orange, and green pieces). I will be placing photographs of the progress I've been making on each of them throughout the next few weeks. I'm going to start also the background paintings on two much larger canvases in the next few days starting a bright orange one, along with a red piece. I am also going to go into the purple piece that I have already finished the smooth under surface of this weekend and hopefully finish the second textured layer by next week so I can have 4 pieces to work with at once in the semi-final stages. I am very excited about where these are going and they are beginning to become very individualized which is something I'm really enjoying and therefore not becoming bored.


Detail:


Details:

Brown Piece:

Studies

These are some photos I have taken of the progression of two studies I'm coming back to and practicing new techniques on. The idea is to be very free and really work with different color combinations to create this idea of depth and intrigue. So far I'm liking the direction and really enjoying working into the pieces. These are smaller pieces so I'm pretty excited to see how they work out in big scale. I want to work on multiple pieces at a time and see how they change throughout the processes.

Texture references

These photographs are ones that I have taken over the past two years and are references for texture, layer, and color that I've always gravitated towards and hope to try and accomplish in my works. I really like the vibrant colors that pull the eye in.

Cells and mixed media

I've been thinking a lot over break as to what direction to go. It kind of stinks because I don't have any of my supplies and I've been traveling all break so I haven't had much chance to actually be painting and doing studies, but I've been searching the internet for visuals to start from. I've been looking at a lot of blown glass for color and shapes, and have sort of begun to realize that some of my work looks like blood cells. I have some photos that are screen shot close ups of blown glass abstractions that I'm looking at for color and, in some, shape. I'm really excited to get back to my studio and start a new.



I've also been super interested in looking at the artist Jonas Gerard which was mentioned to me by someone when I was back home and I've really fallen in love with his process and the way in which he uses color and texture and creates movement and chaos which is something that I think I've been struggling in my work thus far and where I want to push myself. Here are some of the works I am looking at and enjoying and want to sort of explore further this idea of possible mixed media even because in some of his work if you look closely there are photo transfers and I've always been interested in mixed media work and feel that it would give my work that much more depth.