Week 1-2: Intro Presentation
Week 3: Semester Proposal
Abstract
My goal is to make at least 5 paintings this semester. At least 2 will be large scale at around 3-5 square feet, and the rest will be smaller at 8-16 square inches. The paintings will be referenced from images of myself and my personal relationships, experimenting with expressive mark making and paint handling.
Purpose:
Through a more improvisational and intuition-based approach to mark making, I want to explore the intersubjectivity between people and their relationships and environments and how this can be captured in a fleeting moment. What roles do I play within my environments? How does everything amalgamate into a fleeting moment or emotion? Is a moment/emotion singular or does it contain multitudes? To what extent does depicting personal experience become universal?
Methodology
My work will be painted from reference photos from my personal archive. If there is a visual element I really want to add to my work, I will sketch it out, but often I don't really rely on sketches since I usually end up painting based on how I feel in the moment and I like to let the final product reveal itself. The larger the painting, the more range and possibilities I have with my physical application. I like to work wet-on wet with both thin and thick application. I usually start with a thin wash and then block in suggestions of forms. With the next layers, I'll let my train of thought guide me to whatever area I feel drawn to in the moment depending on how I feel, same goes for how I choose to handle the paint. I want to try to leave all stages of layers open if it feels right, which will also describe the evolution of the painting, my thought processes and connections.
Desired outcomes
I want the emotional quality of my application and color usage to evoke contemplation in whoever views my piece. The larger pieces are intended to engulf the viewer's sensory experience of the piece on another level. I want to get viewers to really critically reflect on the same questions I am exploring in my work. I think that achieving some sort of harmony and sense of peace in the world starts with critically thinking about our roles as people and our relationships with other people and the world around us.
Questions/needed support/resources
I feel like I honestly don't keep up with other contemporary artists as much as I would like to. What other places can I discover artists other than through social media/youtube?
Notes
For visual reference, I am bouncing my ideas mostly off of the 4 works shown below. While abstract, the bottom right painting shows the gestural approach and improvisational process that I would like to continue. The bottom middle and left works show the kind of momentary glimpses I like to depict subject and composition-wise. The top photo shows a combination of all of these ideas, which I would like to continue in my work.
Week 5: Affinity Artist Research
Maja Ruznic
Ruznic he paints hazy, blurred figures that are slowly unveiled through watery, gestural layers, recalling childhood memories, trauma, and nostalgia. Her process is highly intuition-based, allowing the nature of paint to guide the forms that start to emerge.
- Artist website: https://www.majaruznic.com/
- Karma: https://karmakarma.org/artists/maja-ruznic/
- Brooklyn Rail: https://brooklynrail.org/2024/07/art/Maja-Ruznic-with-Ann-C-Collins/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/majaruz/?hl=en
I am mostly inspired by Ruznic's intuitive approach to her art process, as well as the quality of the textures that emerge and their ability to evoke emotion in the viewer at their scale. I like to paint largely because of the way a painting compartmentalizes as you continue to work, and that element of mystery and intrigue it brings to the process, and I enjoy how Ruznic integrates "accidents" into her work to the point where they become obsolete. I also would like to explore how texture and color at that scale can feel profound to the viewer.
Doron Langberg
Langberg paints mostly figural work dealing themes of personal relationships, queerness, and memories. His painting style is very quick and gestural, highly layered and varied in texture and application, creating a very sensitive and sensual mood.
- Website: https://www.doronlangberg.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/doronlangberg/?hl=en
I really appreciate Langberg's sensitivity and gestural but intentional layering of paint application, and how this technique conveys a personal emotion that can be felt by the viewer. I'm specifically drawn to the melded relationships between the figure and its environment from the multi-hued underpainting and the selected regions of higher development.
Caroline Absher
Absher makes large-scale, often female figural paintings, often immersed in a sea of thick abstract gestures to create a dreamlike space. Her vibrant palettes create an overwhelming sense of energy and movement that feel like they vibrate off of the canvas, only actualizing upon further observation.
- Website: https://www.carolineeleanor.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/carolineleanor/?hl=en
- https://fredericksfreisergallery.com/artists/caroline-absher/featured-works?view=thumbnails
I am highly inspired by Absher's inventive use of color and the monumental nature of her brushstrokes. I love that the scope of her work fully engulfs the viewer into the world she has created. While my work is more representational, Absher's paintings inspire me to use gestures and color to my advantage and push further into abstracted realms with my figurative work.
Livien Yin
A fairly new painter, Yin's portraits surround their Chinese identity and heritage. Their most recent works show modern Asian Americans in historical contexts to connect their generational identities. Their technique shows an amplified receptiveness to texture and light, while using a bright and almost fictionalized color palette.
- Website: https://livienyin.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/livienyin/
I am inspired conceptually by Yin's approach to painting, in the sense that they use painting as a means of exploring cultural identity by intertwining modern subjects in environments connected to their historical heritage, which is a possibly interesting theme to explore and somewhat relatable as a third-generation biracial Asian American. I also enjoy how their inventive color palettes evoke a certain atmosphere, and the emerging textures that create a near-tactile experience to further connect with the viewer.
Ricky Vasan
Vasan's paintings act as an autobiographical documentation of split moments of his life made up of vibrant blocks of color that capture. The quality of his application reflect the haziness and simplification of recalling a memory, as each scene depicted blends into a body of images that surpass our perception of time.
- Website: https://www.rickyvasan.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rickyvasan_art/
Similarly to Vasan's subject matter, I also am currently enjoying painting fleeting moments in time, and his statement on his work helped me really think about how to further specify what I am trying to communicate with my work. I think his exploration of manipulating time is interesting as well, I am hoping to similarly make statements surrounding the making of a moment and how they are infinte and obsolete at the same time, which I think his work seeps into a bit thematically.
Week 6-7
Over the past couple weeks I've been thinking about my paint handling and technique and how it translates to sensory experiences. I printed out a bunch of pictures that I would like to use as painting references and hung them up on my wall to get a better sense of the common thread between each subject matter that I depict. I already know that my work often portrays the interconnectivity between people or to their environment. I noticed that while the moments that I paint are personal, my work still aims to connect with the viewer on some sense of familiarity to suggest a continuous sense of beauty and awe in each interaction. I think I would also like to paint more pieces from my adult life to show the continuity between time as well.
Week 8: ArtistsNOW! Response
Describe Hollis Hammonds' body of work.
Hollis Hammonds work revolves around the practice of drawing, she also practices painting, sculpture, projection and installation. Her work is mainly large-scale and interactive, using familiar imagery to explore the idea of memory.
What are the goals of this artist's work? How do they make this work?
Hollis Hammond's work deals with memory, the past, loss, social issues, ecology, and collective consciousness, drawing mainly from memory to create life-sized, familiar experiences for viewers. She mainly makes drawings but pushes the boundaries of what drawing is by incorporating other mediums such as sculpture, installation, and projection.
How does the artist seem to be connecting with the audience? How does the artist relate their concerns to the viewer?
Much of Hammond's work is made at a large scale, drawing objects at life size, or making huge expanses of a drawing/sculpture that have to be walked across/through to fully take in, as if the work is a space inviting viewers to engage with it. She also often draws a cartoony style that is accessible to most people and uses recognizable imagery that describes to a larger context.
How has Hollis Hammonds work changed over time? Why has it changed?
Her work has greatly seemed to change with the political landscape, making works surrounding police brutality, Covid-19, and climate change as they are relevant to the public eye. To further immerse and connect with the audience, her work has also become more grand, becoming larger-scale, and utilizing more non-traditional drawing mediums, even extending into sound and video/light projections.
What in particular about this artist's work resonates (or doesn't resonate) with you?
I find Hammonds' ability to draw from memory and create strikingly familiar and realistic forms is very impressive. I also think that using scale as a tool to connect with a collective consciousness speaks to me as an artist. It feels like a really direct way to connect with an audience, which is something I would like to experiment with in my work.
Week 9: Spring Break
Week 10: Midterm Portfolio Assessment
Evolution of Goals
After further discussion stemming from my midterm critique in Painting Studio, I've started to gather some specificity in my intentions with my work moving forward. I've decided to narrow down my subject matter from the wide timeline of images that I had collected to mostly candid moments of simple pleasures from my current everyday life. My intention is that by depicting subjects more closely related to my current self and state of mind, my work will much more directly and honestly play into my loose but calculated mark marking and how I feel in the moment. I want viewers to be drawn in by the blown up scale and expanse of marks so that they can participate in slowing down and fully absorbing the interconnectivity of each brief pocket of temporality.
Works completed & in-progress
Plan for rest of semester
From now until the semester ends, I will finish my two in-progress paintings, build one more 5 x 3 foot canvas and paint on it, then paint on my remaining canvases that are 20 x 30', 30 x 40', and 46.5 x 61', respectively. I have three photos that I know I will work from but am still deliberating on the photo for the 5 x 4 foot painting. My goal is work at a pace of one painting a week.
Week 11
This week I continued to work on my painting and I finished building my canvas frames. I also received some good feedback from my midterm critique. I've gathered that many of my paintings have somewhat differing styles, but I think I can clean this up once I start making paintings with a more narrowed down subject matter. I've been enjoying a highly layered process with reductive techniques to achieve washy/dreamlike textures, and building up to really rich, thick textures. I think this would play well with my work addressing recollection and temporality.
Week 12
Mind-Mapping Exercise
This exercise was very helpful, as I was able to just vomit all of my ideas onto one page. I started by writing down the categories outlined and branching off my responses. From those responses, I let myself get pretty loose with word associations that I found relevant to my interests surrounding work that I want to make and my interests/identity. I found that the web would often branch off into trains of thought that weren't necessarily directly connected to its initial category, but this helped me sort of come full circle for certain ideas multiple times. These repeated ideas helped me clarify what really sticks in my brain and is important to me when I make art. Sometimes these ideas would meld into more questions I want to explore, which I wrote down. I also found through this exercise that many opposing concepts emerged, such as temporality vs immersion, and thick vs thin brushwork. These oppositions are helpful to me because they bring up problems that I can focus on detangling by making more work. Overall, my mind map turned out to be something that I can pull ideas from to craft more specific goals for myself, and something I can peruse through if I ever feel stuck.
Artist Affinity: Part 2
Sasha Gordon
An artist based in New York City and a RISD graduate, Sasha Gordon invents surreal dreamscapes with highly realistic rendering to explore different aspects of her identity. Her paintings evoke a sense of discomfort, curiosity, and sometimes humor through their uncanny compositions and vulnerable situations.
- Instagram: @sashaagordon
- David Zwirner: https://www.davidzwirner.com/artists/sasha-gordon
- Matthew Brown: https://www.matthewbrowngallery.com/artists/sasha-gordon
I identify with Gordon's paintings partly because they speak to parts of her identity that I share, also being a mixed-race, Korean-American, queer, Gen Z woman. These aspects are confusing to navigate growing up and I really enjoy seeing these intersections being explored in such a truthful manner. While our work is technically and visually different, I find that conceptually, her work inspires me to think about different ways I can channel expressions of my identity through the figure and my compositions.
Mao Yan
Mao Yan is a Chinese painter, creating classical portraits with an ethereal sensibility that blurs the lines between realism and abstraction. His technique emphasizes the physicality of the mark, evoking a sense of temporality and complex emotional landscapes from the figure.
- PACE Gallery: https://www.pacegallery.com/exhibitions/mao-yan/
- ShanghART Gallery: https://www.shanghartgallery.com/galleryarchive/artists/name/maoyan
I admire the way that Mao Yan utilizes a technique of loose detail. He builds forms of gesture that make the moment feel temporary, enriching its emotional impact. I hope to achieve this power in my work, elongating a moment of obsoletion and insisting that it be studied. I think that my painting style is starting to find a similar mode, building washy layers that mingle with thicker gestures.
Jennifer Packer
Based in New York City, Jennifer Packer paints candid and intimate renderings of close friends, family members, and flowers. Her textured, organic brushwork and loose buildup of layers amalgamate to a heavily nuanced image that suggests an unknown complexity while also feeling personal.
- Sikkema Malloy Jenkins: https://www.smjny.com/jennifer-packer
- Whitney Museum: https://whitney.org/exhibitions/jennifer-packer
I am inspired by Packer's ability to create an impressionistic, emotional experience through simply painting a candid moment. Her use of a range of techniques to make them unidentifiable upon view is extremely impressive to me. I hope to be able to emulate this approach in my work as she does to create that amount of depth from a single image.
Oscar yi Hou
Oscar yi Hou is a figural painter based in New York City. His work explores identity and relationships between sitters and himself as a painter, using iconography and a topographical buildup of colors to frame elements of a person's background in a contemporary lens.
- Website: https://oscaryihou.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/oscyhou/?hl=en
- Brooklyn Museum: https://www.brooklynmuseum.org/exhibitions/oscar_yi_hou
yi Hou's work speaks to me as an embrace of intersecting queer, Asian-American identity. While my work is not necessarily very iconographic or referenced from poses, I enjoy yi Hou's expansive references to drawing with painting in his work, and the situating of the figure and how that speaks to how the image is read.
Joshua Hagler
Joshua Hagler is based in New Mexico who makes huge pseudo-figural abstract paintings inspired by travel and personal experience. His work is strongly stemmed from a striving for depicting consciousness and its multitudes, using an applying and reductive process to represent its complexities.
- Website: https://www.joshuahagler.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/aemenededeen/
- Nicodim Gallery: https://www.nicodimgallery.com/artists/aemen-ededeen-joshua-hagler
I find Hagler's work inspirational because it takes complex emotions and ideas and brings them to life at such a large and illustrative scale. Although his work is definitely more abstract than the work I produce, its technique and psychological scope speak to how I interpret art and strive to brings those ideas to life.
Final Entry
Over the course of this semester, my goals for painting have specified a lot more. I've found comfort in depicting moments from my everyday life and made connections from my approach/application to concepts I want to convey. For instance, my improvised array of gestural marks draw parallels to my intentions of drawing out a split moment to a more profound experience. I plan on continuing to draw from photographs of my everyday life, but explore more painting techniques that elevate everyday fleeting moments to being fantastical and extravagantly profound in an absurdly beautiful way.
Completed works
Tentative Artist Statement
My paintings explore the beauty of the tension between the preciousness and temporality of a fleeting moment, and how that is experienced, processed and recalled. Each painting is approached as a means to relive and contemplate memories and relationships I have with the subjects, relying on intuition and quick, in-the-moment expressions to guide each gesture. Ultimately, I aim to build an elevated figural landscape that places viewers in the scene, blurring the lines between the finite and infinite quality of time and evoking a sense of existential awe.
Future Plans
Over the summer and into the fall, I plan to experiment more with application, process and layering, focusing on creating a more complex and fantastical body of work in terms of technique. I will hopefully build up a repertoire of techniques that I can more easily refer to when painting. Meanwhile, I will continue to research other artists, take more reference photos, and consume more books and movies to inspire and inform my goals as an artist. By the fall, I will use these techniques and newfound knowledge to inform my paintings, delving into more large-scale works that create a more immersive visual experience.