Concentration #1

Watercolor and watercolor pencil on wood

16x20in 

Big Idea: Fusion of nature and humanity: nature as euphoria 

No. 9: Body as Surface

In Bird's passage about the body being utilized as surface for art, he predominately talks about the practice of tattooing. Tattoos are often used to announce a person's identity or to make some sort of social statement. Body painting was also used mostly for ritual performances and was meant for temporary roles. Since as early as the fifth century, people have been using the body as surface and tattooing has been a respected and artistic skill across cultures. More recently, the body has been used as art in unique and sometimes controversial ways to make a statement.

Using the body as surface is definitely something that requires out of the box thinking. Rather than personally tattooing myself or other people, I could photograph the different tattoos people have and recreate them in my own piece of artwork. What would the different tattoos say about the people who have them? How does tattooing compare to or differ from those who inflict harm on their body as a coping method and leave scars on their body? Is the processes of tattooing equally as important as the final product of the image? I could explore the ideas behind plastic surgery; could this possibly be considered an art form too?

No. 34: Allegory

According to Bird, allegory is a way for art to link literature and visual imagery. It personifies concepts and transforms them from abstract to literal. By using allegory, the artist can describe how they feel about subjects like love, time, and freedom by carefully choosing images to represent them. Allegory was popular in classical Greek art and it often served to teach a lesson to the viewers.

I feel like I already use allegory in some of my work. I like to personify the feeling of euphoria, spirituality, and the power of nature. In my concentration, I am doing this by creating whimsical and fantastical scenes in a forest setting. I like the idea of bringing "love" to life, like many artists have done in the past, but how could I modernize it? It would also be interesting to create a scene of what fear would look like, and how that would perhaps differ from person to person.

No. 81: Chance

Chance began to play a large role in art when society and artists began to explore psychoanalysis and the unconscious. Art became less about product and more about the process of creating and the emotions that it evoked. The Dada movement embraced chance in art, aiming to replace rationality with irrationally. Because this kind of art was about intuition, emotion, and lack of control, it was thought to be more "truthful."

What emotions can I express in my own work through chance? When I think of chance and artists like Pollock, I think about chaos. I could use a tornado-like image to express chaos as well and stress. It could be like a tornado in the mind forming slowly and then increasing velocity and severity with the accumulation of built up stress. I could also utilize the idea of chance as a release and as a metaphor for freedom. If I took a completely different approach, I could leave it up to chance to determine my color pallet in a painting by blindly dipping my brush into random hues. 

No. 50: Whiteness

In Bird's passage on whiteness, he describes how white is "is more than a color or absence of color," rather it is purposefully used by artists to evoke certain meanings. Artists often use white when talking about spirituality in their work, and is often linked to purity and religion. White was also a characteristic of Greek sculptures, especially figurative ones with flowing contours. The Neoclassical style in particular embraced the color white in its poetic and sensual compositions, but was also adopted again with the emergence of minimalism.

When I see the color white, I think of the words clean, soft, angelic, and quiet. I would like to create a painting of "silence" used only whites and its tonal values. If whispers could be captured on a canvas, I think they would be white. I could also explore whiteness in a tactile piece by using materials that think "feel" like the color white (i.e. silk, cotton balls, fur). Or perhaps I could take a different approach on whiteness too discuss emotional emptiness. When I think about this, a blank, cold white room comes to mind, a room so bare that it would produce echos.

No. 93: Body As Medium

According to Bird, using the body as a medium was present as early as cave-art where hand prints were used to mark the human presence. Dead body parts were also commonly turned into art and utilizing the body was often linked to rituals. Bird mentions that because everyone has a body, it is a universal medium. Lastly, using the body artistically played a large part in the launch of performance art.

Using the body as a medium is a tricky concept. When I think of performance art, I automatically think of dance. I think dance is such a powerful expression that speaks to audiences similarly to the way visual art does. In particular, I love modern dancing, and the movements often tell a story. It would be interesting to use dance as a performance art piece and "choreograph" a painting. The line quality and brushstrokes could be directly linked to the type of movements in the dance. Another avenue to explore is hair. Hair is kind of interesting to me. Hair is sacred to a lot of people, and many of take pride in maintaining and styling our hair. It can be beautiful but repulsive at the same time. For example, if someone finds hair in the sink, or perhaps in their food, it becomes a sickly foreign object. How could I explore this juxtaposition about hair and culture in my own work? Lastly, I could combine my passion for running and using the body as medium by using footprints to record my strides.

Watercolor Demo

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