In college I had a hard time deciding on a major and on a whim without ever taking a college art course I declared studio art as my major. I loved it.
For my senior project I painted a series of abstract violins.
Artist Statement
I enjoy being creative, whether it is painting,
drawing, making sculptures, or simple crafts.
I am a visual person and I like to have different images of things I
find interesting around me. As an artist
I want people to be interested in my work and to be drawn toward it, and I do
not believe art needs to be controversial or aggressive to be interesting or
important.
Most of my decisions, especially initially, are
made intuitively. As I reflect on my
work, I can see certain commonalities in color relationships and pictorial
organization even though I do not plan these things from the beginning. Most of my other decisions come from brain
storming about what direction I want my work to take, and what I may want to experiment
with. Then I begin exploring one of
these ideas through trial and error.
When I feel like a work is complete I can see that the entire
composition has been equally worked and everything belongs together. I feel like there is nothing else that can be
done to the work. Often, when I feel a
piece is done, I still am not sure if I am happy with the work. It takes me time to analyze my work, decide
if it is good, and to determine if it pleases me.
This small series of paintings deals with the emotions
that can be behind art and/or music. In
a work I did a number of months ago I made a paper collage of an image similar
to a violin and then I made a painting that resembled the collage. Looking at this collage allowed me to see the
interesting textures that were in the collage and then to simulate those
textures in my painting. Music and
specifically the violin are some things I am fairly familiar with. I am a minor in music at Transylvania University,
and I have played the violin since elementary school. I love the image of
violins because they are organic and very interesting to me. I tend to use shapes that are curvy and seem
to flow. So now, out of the success of
my previous work, I made these paintings using different color combinations to
create the different emotions and different styles that music and art can have.
