Three paragraph Statement
The body of work that I’m doing at the moment is figurative. I like to contemplate life and death. I want to show a balance of life and death. When I think of life I automatically think of humans. I chose the female figure as a main subject because women represent life. Women are the only ones who can carry a child. So in a way woman represent the potential to start new life. Men play an important role in the creation of life but women spend more time in the process because they are the ones who have to carry the child for nine months.
For this body of work I’m mainly using myself as a model. I figured that life an death is a thing that I deal with everyday so I would make a great model to show the balance of life and death. In reality all humans can represent the balance of life and death because life is so fleeting. I just figured I know my body the best so it makes sense to use myself for art.
I wanted to do classical painting like the old masters but in a new way. The old masters painted nudes a lot but the painting were very smooth and the brushstrokes were hidden. Some of my figures are nude because I think clothing may get in the way of the message. The nude human figure is humanity in the truest and purest form. My nude paintings have a more impressionist style. The brushstrokes I’m using are very loose and all over the place and gives my paintings more movement. I like to paint in a more expressive style.
At the New Hampshire Institute of Art senior get an entire year to work on a project. I was very excited to be able to choose my own topic. I chose to paint the balance between life and death. However it didn't go as well as I wanted and I ended up not feeling that passionate about it. I tried to use many things to symbolize life and death but I decided to change my idea. These are the few paintings I did for my original idea.
This is a painting of life and death dancing with each other. The one with red fabric is death and the one with blue fabric is life.
This shows life and death in a positive way. The woman is looking into a tunnel which shows that there is light at the end of the tunnel.
This painting shows death in a negative way. I was trying to make it look very dark and depressing. I like this painting but in a way I think its a failure because the figure doesn't fit with the rest of the color pallet. This is because I painted the background and then painted the figure.
