The image above is one of many painting assignment I have had throughout the semester. I don't want this blog to contain too much student work because it feels dishonest to represent myself as an artist through images that were assigned or conceptualized by professors, however I have selected a few images that I feel are of particular interest and I am fond of as an artist. They may not be the best, they may be weird and not eye pleasing but they were are excellent teachers and helped me to learn a little bit more about this thing we call art.
The top image as well as the one below were experimentation's on painting on white(above) and black(below) backgrounds. We had to construct a still life using symbolically heavy objects (example a gun is symbolically heavy and cloud is not) in a cardboard box that we had beaten up thoroughly. We then had to reconstruct the objects we placed in our box out of cardboard. Note the real skull key chain and the large skull made of cardboard. (this cardboard skull sits in my studio at school and his name is Ulrich). After we had painted this still life we then had to crush it as flat as possible. Some objects of course cannot be crushed but the cardboard was supposed to suffer. Once our still life was crushed we had to paint it again. This is the image painted below. Both were done in oil on canvas
The next painting below had a very long long long assignment, shortened for the readers sake. We had to have multiple discussions about a social or political problem that interested use with three or more not related people who were strong in their personal opinions. Then once we had come up with our view point and emotional stance of the issue we were to paint a triptych of the image through using a paint removal method for the under drawing. (coat the entire painting in a translucent coloured paste and wipe it off as the drawing mechanism) My subject of interest was effects of children using technology.
This next painting is only a partial of the finished piece. There was much done to it afterwards but the background was made by doing a pour on the canvas on a concrete floor, I used a coloured acrylic pouring medium which seeped through and glued the canvas to the floor and ripped off the top layer of the concrete. The end result of this was so cool, I had to restrain myself from destroying the entire studio floor to make more.
Last but not least was something I did in my personal time during the school year. It is not amazing but I felt that the hands and the nut shell thing were painted so well that they had to be shared.