A VERY Rough & Dry First Draft of my Artist Statement

I create my paintings based off of American landscapes. I am intriged how the colors & warmth of air & land lie in our subconcious. In my work I am exploring how light & color spark emotion & feelings with my audience. I am interested in the effects of how time & space can connect with the viewer. My paintings are oil & canvas. The process of my paintings is cohesive throughout my body of work. I am inspired by empiricism-All knowledge that is given to us visually, is derived from a sense of experience. Painting, to me, is like a seductive dance. I want my paintings to provoke my viewers emotions & senses.

The expamples that i chose were: Molly Gordons Recipe Approch. I chose this example because it give me a great, basic outline of how to write an artist statement. Also, i looked at: Art Business "It's Stupid". I liked this example because it helped me realize that not everyone is an artist and that how it is important to connect with EVERYONE in an artist statement.

*This is a very, very, rough draft of my artist statement.

Walter Benjamin-The Work of Art in The Age of Mechanical Reproduction

• Reproduction detaches from the domain of tradition.
• Art has always been reproductable.
• Mechanical reproduction of art changes the reaction of the masses toward art.
• Technology & machanism helped destroy the aura.
• Reproduction of art would make it political.
• Reproduction of art changes the direct, intimate fusion of visual & emotional enjoyment of the viewer.
• Time & space lacking in reproduction of artwork.
• The quality or atmosphere seen in original artwork is not visible when it is reproduced.
• Quanity vs. quality
• Reproduction creates a demand for the masses.
• Photography is slowly distroying aura.

1. Why, in some sense, does politics control art?
2. How are we, as a society going to revive aura?
3. Are we so visually stimulated everyday by colors/pictures/film/shapes that we are loosing touch with time & space?

This essay does relate to my work because in my paintings i saturate the viewers emotions with the images that i create to remind them of a certain time & space in the viewers life.

The Death of The Author

Ronald Barthes explores the relationship between the author, reader & text. Barthes projects that: in order to read lititature we have to remove ourselfs from the author. Reading this essay I found that empiricism is important in a piece of work ( lititature & art) because all the knowledge that is given to us visually, is derived from a sense of experience. It is important not to criticize the work, but to disentagle the knowledge that we are interpreting. Nothing should be deciphered. Something that is visceral, such as language & art, should be combed over, not pierced. More importantly, it is vital not to distroy the work entirely, but to appreciate the language that is given to us as a whole. When something is produced by an author (or, as I read it an artist) the creator is confiding in us. The language that we see performs. It is important to recognize that language knows a "subject"-not a person. Language creates a beauty that is ment for a throng of people. Not just a particular person. " The birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the author."

• Does the reader distroy the work of the author?
• Why do we, as the reader/viewer tend to pierce the work instead of disentangling it?
• As readers/viewers...why do we tend to create an ultamite meaning for a piece of work?

This article did relate to my work because the language that is being produced on the canvas is something that is not concrete. My paintings are not to be viewed as something that is going on in a certain place or time. My paintings give an illusion of landscape environments. These environments are based on color relations, but my paintings are of ephemeral worlds that lie in our subconcious. My paintings are about the subject as a whole, that everyone can relate to.

Why do I do This

The Big View

I am an artist because it is what I wanted to be when I was in first grade. In my class everyone sat in a circle and we had to state what type of career we wanted to pursue as an adult. Most of my peers said: doctors, lawyers, astronauts, and bankers. I was the only one in class to state that I wanted to be an artist. Every summer since I was five years old I always took art classes at the Kalamazoo Institute of Art. I found that naturally I was great at making things.
I wanted to pursue art as my professional choice when I entered high school. My former high school teacher Edie McaFee strongly suggested that I should enroll in the International Baccalaureate program for Fine Art. She was a huge inspiration for me and she really pushed me in my senior year. She believed in me. During my senior year of high school I received my I.B. certificate for Fine Arts and also was granted the Department of Fine Arts medal. One of my goals my senior year was to be in the local gazette for Young Artist of the Year. I reached my goal and had a photo of me, and a statement about my work in the spring of 2006 paper.
Sadly, my art career took a turn when I entered college at Western Michigan University. I did not see myself doing this anymore. I gave up on myself. My first year of college I was "Undecided." That was my major! My second year of college I could not take it anymore. I had to create art. It is in my blood and my body & mind were telling me that I have to do this! I applied to the Art Department at my college and I was accepted. I decided that I wanted to pursue art education.
At the end of my second year of college it was time for me to get serious about art. My great aunt who, at the time was President of the Board of Trustees at Ringling suggested that I should have a tour of Ringling College of Art & Design to see if I liked it. Well, I did not just like it, I fell in love with it! I knew that this was the place where I needed to be.

The Immediate View

I started to think about my thesis project last summer. In the summer I wanted to focus on patriotism but, it was hard for me to express my thoughts about it on canvas. I didn't know what to paint except for guns, stars, and stripes! My concrete idea for my thesis started the first week of school. I knew that I wanted the United States to be a part of my work, but not the main focal point. I started to think about how fast the terrain is in the United States. How we travel to find happiness, and how colors act differently in different parts of land. (hot, cold, aggressive...ect). I settled on this idea because I love color & and i enjoy the act of painting. I knew that with this idea for thesis i can stay focused. To help me stay focused I constantly paint simultaneously. I feel that if i work this way, my mind is constantly cranking out ideas instead of focusing all my energy one painting.

Chaos, Territory, Art. Deleuze & the Framing of the Earth- Elizabeth Grosz& Challenging the Literal

Chaos, Territory, Art Deleuze & the Framing of the Earth is about the study of Ontology. Grosz expresses her thoughts along with the theories of Deleuze. Ontology is the study of nature, existence, & reality & how these existences relate to all arts. Deleuze believes that art does "not produce concepts, though it does address problems & provocations. [Art] produces sensations, affects, intensities as its mode of addressing problems." Grozs expresses that art & philosophy go hand in hand. Philosophy is the sibling of art and its various practices. Philosophy is the force & power behind art. Grozs states that all the materials in art generate & intensify sensations. Viewing these materials in art affects the nervous system triggering emotion making the viewer joyful or sad. My favorite quote from this eassay is: "Painting ever more deeply materializes the body while music spiritualizes it, this is because, through the various arts, the body is, or a moment at least, directly touch by the forces of chaos from which it so carefully shields itself in habit..." Philosophy & art share chaos, & their "capacity to ride the waves of a vibratory universe without direction or purpose."

• Do we produce art for a purpose?
• As artists, do we "create" to find chaos?
• Do we produce art in search of the unknown of our subconcious?

Challenging the Literal

In this chaper, Dave Hickey breaks down the veriations of semiotics: The sign process, sign signification, and sign communication through language & art. Hickey expresses that: "While metaphors may require an imaginative leap in their initial use (such as in aesthetic uses in poetry or the visual arts) many metaphors become so habitually employed that they are no longer perceived as being metaphors at all." Their are three concepts of metaphor: Orientational: metaphors primarily relating to spatial organization, Ontological: Metaphors which associate activities, emotions, and ideas with entities and substances, and Structural: metaphors overarching, which allow us to structure one concept in terms of another. I believe that the paintings that I produce fit in the catagory of ontological metaphors.

• Is it important to use metaphor in artwork?
• How does irony affect artwork?
• How do I recognize something that is literal vs. metaphorical

My Semester Plan

The subject of my works are of American landscapes. My landscapes that I create are of the Rocky Mountains, forest, the big sky of Montana, the Badlands, the Great Lakes, & the desert. The Form of my work is expressed by breaking down color, form, & space of a particular landscape. My paintings are categorized as abstract expressionism. The materials I use are oil & canvas. The reason why I am inspired by American landscapes, is because traveling to these places makes me appreciate the country that which I live. Our land is vast & beautiful offering us every type of terrain. In these American Landscapes we can: play, explore, dream, & discover. We can to be happy or sad. We can share moments with the one(s) we love or to find God. Going to a particular place can bring a sense of emotion.

My Research will consist of: Looking at American landscape photography & re-working landscapes they way I view & emotionally react to them. This will be done in my sketchbook. I will be reading more about the abstract-expressionist & the subject(s) of the their work. Looking back at my photographs that i have taken of American landscapes & remember what that particular terrain made me feel at that moment in time.

My materials are oil & canvas. the process for each one of my paintings starts off with a wash of a particular color that will be the most consistent in a painting. Generally after a wash of paint I use OMS solvent to let it drip down from the top to let it run to the base of my canvas. I do this to create my first layer of bleeding. Sometimes I only use OMS solvent in certain areas of my painting. I keep repeating the washing & bleeding process till i have enough layers to work with. I then go in with oil paint and start with basic shapes. I use a makeup blush brush and re-work the paint to create areas of intense blending. I then create more layers with OMS solvent; which more bleeding occurs.

I will be making about 3-4 paintings a week. Large in size. 4ft x 6ft ( average) but some will be bigger.

I want to have over twenty paintings before the fall semester is over. I want to have large paintings & a large & consistent body of work.

I would like to have an individual critique every other week and my first group critique in the middle of September and my second critique late October or the first week of November.