Inside my head.

Today I made a small moquette of what my Thesis show will look like. It was a fun exercise and had me thinking about installation issues that I probably wouldn't have thought about had I not done it. I made it so I could keep rearranging things as my ideas grow. It is really helpful when it comes to planning out the placement of work and what is going to happen in the space, especially when my work is concentrated on the distortion of it. It also serves as a little reminder about how much work I have to do, and the materials I still need to acquire--such as sculpting my bodies! So much to do, so little time. This definitely helped me as a visual planner, though. 

Workin' hard, painting harder.

This week I had two of my first critiques for the semester. I have to say...they went pretty well. I got some good feedback. A lot of people liked my work, and I got some ideas on where to go next. I am happy with where I am at in my work and I am getting really excited about my show. Oh, and since I last posted I got into the Student Show at Weber. Woot! I submitted to CUAC this week as well, and I really REALLY hope I have a chance at getting in. It would be awesome to show there and to have an opportunity to show in L.A. (The juror is from L.A. and is looking for Utah artists to represent in a show there).

I decided right now I am not going to do a video animation for my show even though I was really excited about it at first. New genres is something that I am interested in and I think that I have seen a lot of strong work in new media recently, but I don't think my ideas are ready for that. I received some good advice from a few different professors this week and I feel I have a stronger direction now. I am still going to make various "figure" sculptures, but they won't be projected on. I am really going to explore what interests me about the space and the figure interacting together. I think I was trying to force that with the video part of it, and it just wasn't there conceptually. I can create an interaction of space and figure without video. Most of the positive feedback was about the architectural spaces I was creating for my figures, so I think I am going to explore it even further. I know right now that the space is important because it creates a context of distorted perspective for the audience and for the figures in my work. The figures are a metaphor for the ways life can distort us. This weekend I have a lot to do and catch up on, but I am looking forward to a complete weekend of art. 

I paint butterflies and rainbows. Not.

Mourning death is never easy, especially when it's a child.


To be painting what I am painting right now is odd, to say the least, but also constructive to my ideas and probably necessary.

I can't just stop what I have been doing just because it hits too close to home. Sometimes making art isn't all butterflies and rainbows. It's work (all of the time), and most of the time, it's brutal. 

I have been more or less dealing with "death" in my paintings for awhile now. Not just death in a literal sense, but death and the experience of being a person, of life, living, and trial. Death of ideas, of trust, of relationships- all kinds of death. The figures in my work to me seem to be a metaphor for that human experience. The strange, indirect ways in which I have contorted the "bodies" are the ways in which life sometimes will disfigure us as people. Our experiences more often times than not, will lend themselves to be disfiguring in the mind and in the body, sometimes even in our environment. Of course some of these pictures are more narrative according to my own experiences and there are some that aren't. I think that's why I like to make these images. Who really knows what goes on inside my head or in my life? Who really knows what happens in anyones life? We really don't know the story behind every person we meet, but I can bet that they are similar. The way we deal with them are not. I deal with things on a much different level than most people I know.

In a way, continuing these paintings while mourning the death of someone is confirmation for me. Death is elevating human experience in my pictures even more so now than it was before. Or maybe, it's just me and the way I view my own pictures. Right now, everything seems to be moving in slow motion all of the time. It's like I am taking in every detail and moment on a literal level.

In all sincerity, I won't ever get the answers to all of life's big questions. But at least I can make urgent pictures and raise some of my own big questions, for myself and for others. 

Land of the Rising Fish Heads

Here is some of my work going on in the BFA house right now: 

Detail

This is the painting I showed in my last post. I have re-worked it since then and now I am taking a little break with it. Right now it feels right, and I want to let it sit for a few days. While I'm resting with that painting, I have gone back to one I started last fall but haven't touched in months (pictured below). I felt like it became irrelevant to my new ideas and wanted to start again on it. Today was an awesome painting day. I got a lot accomplished and I felt good about what I was doing. I wish every day could be that way. I think I am most productive when I can be working on multiple projects and bounce back and forth. It's not really my thing to do something start to finish. I like to ponder it and re-visit paintings a number of times before they really feel finished to me. 

The colors in these images are not perfect, but you get the idea. In this new painting, I am playing with the idea of hybrid spaces and figures. I think it is similar to my big paper painting (of course). This work is something of landscape, in orientation and in content, but it also becomes a room or enclosed environment. I think it is kind of funny that since this is the first landscape orientation I have painted on in awhile (My last few have been vertical), that I decided a land formation needed to be in the foreground (Conditioning!?!?). Nicole probably was getting annoyed because I kept saying, "Oh look, how funny, that dead fish head is a rising sun," but I thought it was kind of interesting.  Sometimes weird moments like that inspire titles for me, so I think I may call this piece, "Land of the Rising Fish Heads" or something to that effect; even if in the end, I decide to paint over my dead fish head.

Nicole painting in our sweet studio! :)

That's all for now. Feel free to comment! :)