Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art - Young Contemporaries 2021
STATEMENT:
Art making often feels like an existential crisis, and that rollercoaster of exhausting and energizing comprises my journey with art throughout the years. From the initial burden of being labeled the ‘gifted art kid’ by parents in primary school, through my collegiate years painting here at The College, I’ve been in the midst of my fair share of existential crises. That’s where my collection, “Burnt Out Art Theory,” and the works “Gifted Child Burnout” and “Oslo’s World” in particular, begin. My artmaking process centers around the basics, so to speak, of painting and artmaking. Color mixing and relationships, shape forming and interaction, and narratives of positive and negative space all describe my compositions at surface level. I really focus on the early concepts of artmaking that construct an artist's foundation (such as value, color, shape, form, and texture), because once inspiration and confidence fall short in the crisis, the basics are what we all reflect on. So why not just start there instead? Beginning by filling the canvas space with a variety of saturated and muted color tones, I tend to construct an abstracted landscape space that provides a structure for any line, figure, or shape work I add after. In these paintings, I want to push the viewer to center themselves in the middle ground between the positive and negative spaced elements, and also find their own relationship with the enveloping forms and structures.
*Special thanks to Rick Rhodes Photography*
Hill Exhibition Gallery - Volume III Series
STATEMENT:
Completed half in Acrylic, and half in Oil, Volume III contains five abstract works full of color and complexity. Playing with the concepts of color theory, color relationships, and personal nostalgia, each piece represents the emotions behind this volume of my life. “Space Between Us” is honoring relationships that are almost perfect, but with wrong timing. Exploring new situations and solutions is “Instigated,” while “It Was Easy At First” addresses working harder on things that seemed to come easy initially. “Bored Board” exists to show that sometimes we all just need to take a step back from sophistication and wrap yarn around a board of wood. Ending with “How to Runaway,” the process of this piece taught me it’s okay to not have everything figured out, and to find comfort in the lack of resolution. Each color landscape seeks to be a visual exploration for the viewer, as well as encourages a quiet period of personal reflection on the volume of life they might also be in.
