Artist statement for Word Project

The word I got was Elegiac (elegy). Elegiac means having a mournful quality. This word purposed quite a challenge for me because I am not a mournful artist. I usually enjoy painting sunsets, rainbows, Disney characters and pretty flowers. Due to this planning out my compositions was not easy. I went on Google and typed in "elegiac", "elegy", "mournful" and "sad". I then compiled a list of things I noticed about each piece and what medias I thought I could use.  
     
I already knew I wanted to go down an illustrative road with my pieces, so in my sketch book I tried to develop pieces with a lot of emotion, or pictures that made you have to look deeper into the composition to find a meaning. 

I started with a collage that had a opened letter, envelope, and a hand on top. The letter Read "Dearest Jane, If your reading this.." and then stopped I did this to create an unsettling feeling that allowed my viewers to come up with an ending by themself. However to me I  thought of it as this person reading this letter may have had a loved one in the military and this is there "If your reading this, then I am already gone." letter. Over all I think this piece has a strong concept however I think It looks a little sloppy and as though I rushed through it. In addition I with I would Have added a newspaper background instead of a water color background.

The next piece I did was the winter day piece. I hate winter and snow. I think It should only 

snow the week of Christmas then it should melt and the temps
should go back to the 70 degrees. Anyways to me every day of winter just feels dead and dull because it gets dark early and no one is out side running around in bare feet, shorts, and a tank top. Overall I really like this piece and the color scheme I chose for it however I think my perspective in my composition is a little off because my path does not look like it is going back into space as well as I would have liked it to.  

My next three pieces are kind of all the same composition yet different. I did a series of eyes that deal with the stages of grief. My first eye I did was supposed to represent the shock of  hearing about the death of a person. To display this shock I chose acrylic paint, and  made the eye very wide and made it look kinda hazed. The next stage I did was anger. I chose to do a lot quick vigorous strokes, of acrylic paint, that slanted down. I also made a risky decision to paint thus whole picture in mainly blue and green because I wanted to go against the norm to display anger in red. I also thought the blue would represent that even though the person is angry they are still sad and mourning over the loss or what ever they just heard. The Last eye represents the tears and actual release of of emotion and pain of the loss. I did this one in water color. I thought that water colors would give my painting a wet muddy look that would make it look as though this person was crying. 

                       

       

                        

Although my ideas and concepts for each of my pieces were strong I feel my planning for the assignment may have been better than my execution. I think I could have enhanced the meaning of my word by not focusing on such cliche topics, however I did try to expand upon my cliche ideas. I also think some of my pieces are a little sloppy form a craftsmanship perspective and that it would have behooved me to have spent another hour or so going over my highlights and shadows with one more layer. Overall though I am proud of myself for being able to create ten decent pieces that represent my word elegiac. 

Illustrations I like (Word Project Planning)

When I was a young child my mother, being the literature teacher she was, thought it was important to read stories to me and my older sister almost every night. My mom enjoyed art and teaching, and still does, so she would always try to find books with awesome images and metaphors. Due to these guidelines she set for herself I had a child hood full of Little Bear, Dr.Seuss, Jan Brett and Eric Carle books.

To this day I can not read a Dr. Seuss book with out looking for a connection between the story in the book and our lives and world today. A few of my favorite stories by him are All The Places You Will Go, Sneetches, and Oh The Thinks You Can Think.

                     

I also to this day enjoy going back to my moms collection of Jan Brett and Eric Carle and viewing their wonderful and beautiful illustrations for their books. (click on pics below to visit artists website)

                 

Lastly my mom loved soft shows and sweet characters so Little Bear, by Suzanne Collins, just became one of the TV shows I grew up Watching. In addition had a great love for teddy bears so when I got my first Little Bear stuffed animal that came with a book and tea set I thought I had the "real Little Bear" so reading his stories just became supper exciting.  (I also enjoyed Suzanne Collins other shows such as Clifford: Puppy Dog Days and Oswald)

                       
Because I love picture books I wanna design my ten pieces, for my word project, to be very expressive as well as to have an illustrated feel.

Scholastic

Wow after looking at some of the pieces on this site  I feel really untalented. All of the pieces on this site are so unique and creative that they blow my mind! One of my favorite ones that I found was a piece by Drew Spielvogel, a 12 year old, his piece is called Aging Happily and it is incredible. It is a beautifully done drawing of and older smiley man that is so life like and has so much character! When you look at the picture you just cant help but smile because the picture just vibrates with this contagious joyous feel. In addition I have heard of this site before and heard that Scholastic hands out scholarships and  awards but I never knew the specifics of the program and awards until now.  

WI ArtsBoard

When I went on to this site I kinda just browsed though the site. Whilst going though the site I stumbled upon a percent art tab underneath the creative category. Next I clicked on the opportunities that tab and found a couple adds for job listings and a couple of site links that lead to other job offers. I also explored the Wisconsin Art Boards tab under the category Community. In this tab I found different dates that were linked to the news letters from the ArtsBoard. The news letters were chalked full of quotes, opportunities, up coming events, and different videos.  Overall I learned that Wisconsin has many more opportunities for art than I ever thought. I also learned that Wisconsin has a bigger art community than I though.

Portal WI

Oh My GOSH!!! This site, provides so many resources for artists of all sorts who live in WI. I, being a more visual artist, clicked on the visual arts category and found so many events that are so cool. One of the events I found is called "A Brush With Life" artwork by Bonnie Paruch. At this event the people who attend will explore the elements of emotion and story telling in painting with artist Bonnie Paruch. Although I have never heard of that artist this event intrigues me because one of my favorite thing to do as an artist is to express an emotion in my painting. In addition I learned a little about other fine arts in Wisconsin. For instance I had no idea how musically involved Wisconsin actual is. Although I know Summerfest is huge music festival I thought that is as far as Wisconsin music events go, however I was proved wrong by the Portal WI site because there are many opportunities for listening to and performing in live shows underneath the music tab.  

Visual Truth

A visual truth is a truth that can be applied to all humanity expressed through visual media. For my AP English Writing and Composition class I was given the task to create my own visual truth. So there I sat in AP English going "Oh great how the heck am I suppose to come up with a truth that applies to all humanity without creating a cheese video or craft" (Believe me it is harder than it looks :) ), then I got the brilliant idea to search through my bible for any interesting inspirational quotes I highlighted when I was bored in conformation class and breakaway sessions from youth camps. I fanned through the pages of my bible and stumbled upon the verse Ecclesiastes 1:9 (ESV) “What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun.”, then I smacked my self in the face (literally), because this is one of my favorite bible verses and it has helped me get through many stressful situations, and I was like "Katelyn how did this not pop into your head you baffoon!". Anyways this quote applies to all humanity because so many people are caught up in the past deciding how they would have done things differently if the could go back in time or they are wrapped up in what they can do to prepare themselves for the future. Well you obviously cant travel back in time ( I have tried does not work) nor can you see into the future (also have tried and failed at), and this quote symbolizes just letting go of the past and not yearning for the future, but living in the “now”.

   For this reason I chose to visually do a Past, Present, Future sign for the sake of making a clear distinction between the different paths that one could look at their life from. In the background of my sign I collaged old newspapers. To me an old newspaper symbolizes past events, for this reason the newspaper supports my claim by showing that the past is in the past just like how the newspaper is in the background. I also chose to add white and yellow right behind the present to really draw the viewer’s attention to it to make it the focal point of my piece. The bright white and yellow also symbolize the sun and how there is “nothing new under the sun” because we are all here in this one very moment we call the present. The wording on the signs are also done in bright white to attract the viewers eyes while the words in the quote are done in black so that they do not draw the viewer’s attention away from the sign.

   In addition, I chose to strategically place two dandelions in the right corner of my painting, with loose seeds being blown in different directions. On the seeds flowing towards the past I wrote words like fear and loss to help support my claim of releasing the worries of the past to live in the in the “now”. I also chose to write words like forgiveness and joy on the seeds on the present sign to get across the idea of now is the time to forgive others or ask for forgiveness and now is the time to be joyful of life’s blessings. Lastly on the future sign I chose to only have one dandelion seed that said hope. To me hope is just like a sketch or blueprint for the future because the future is not finalized it can still be redrawn.

   Looking at my painting some might say that it is a little cliché due to the fact that it is a painting of the well known Past, Present, and Future sign, however I choose to do that particular sign because almost everyone has seen it before and knows that it symbolizes living in the moment therefore it helps improve my argument. I also made the image my own by adding the dandelions, background, and quote to create an entirely new composition.

"Adventure is Out There" painting

For those of you who don't know I am a Huge Disney fan and I collect a lot of quotes from Disney movies. I really wanted to do a painting that corresponds with the quote "Adventure is Out There", from the popular movie UP. Fully knowing that this is a popular overdone quote, I new that I needed to design a composition that had not yet been seen, so I came up with a almost scrap book/collage design for my composition. To execute this design I collaged newspaper on a canvas and painted on the newspaper. In my mind the newspaper represented different pieces of recorded adventures. I then created clouds out of doilies and pasted them onto the canvas, just to add a little flair to my collage as well as another creative element. To add a finishing touch I painted the quote onto the canvas and that kind just brought the whole piece together.