Under the Willow

Friday, January 3, 2014

Artwork: Senior Project

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. 

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