Curatorial Rationale
Talent has always been something I admired in others. Over the years I jumped around trying things like sports, music, and art to find the one thing I could be really good at. But art in particular was something that really stood out to me. Art was probably one of the first things I pursued the seriously. I remember looking at drawings of cars my father had made in his old university notebooks. I thought it was so cool to be able to make a drawing that looked like a photo. Throughout school, I’d often draw in the margins and on the backs of my papers during class, but I never became truly invested in art. Going into my junior year of high school, however, I decided I wanted to improve my drawing skills. Once I’d decided to improve my drawing, I realized I didn’t have many traditional skills. The majority of my drawings were just random sketches or doodles. In my junior year, I started to seriously attempt drawing from life. The first two drawings in my exhibition, Paint Tools and Teacher, were those attempts. Teacher was a drawing of a live model, which required the ability to measure the proportions of a person who is standing in front of you. This is also needed in a still life drawing like my piece Paint Tools. Unlike drawing an inanimate object, drawing a live model provides its own set of challenges. You have to work with a time constraint, and you have to adjust for the movement of the model. These pieces serve as a point of reference for me, where I can see how my skills really started to develop. These pieces were done in graphite which became my preferred medium for most of my drawings. Graphite is a forgiving medium. Graphite allowed me to draw confidently because I could erase an area and start again. While my goal was to push myself, I didn’t want to go overboard and set unrealistic goals. But my successes in graphite gave me confidence to start using color pencils as in my piece Cup of Pencils. Most of the subjects in my drawings didn’t have much meaning besides being things I liked or found visually interesting. The subjects themselves were not the focus. I wanted to make drawings that highlighted my improvement. The theme of this exhibition isn’t a complicated idea. I set a goal; I wanted to get better at drawing. I believe my work shows I achieved my goal. Reaching my goal doesn't mean I’m done improving as an artist. I want to continue to get better at drawing. I want to explore other forms of art. I wished I had stretched myself to pursue other mediums sooner. I enjoyed working with colored pencils more than I thought I would, and I think that would’ve been the same for things like ink, charcoal, or pastels. I’m not sure if I’ll pursue a career in art, but to have some talent is enough for me. My hope is that the growth shown by my work may give others the drive to invest, or re-invest, into developing their skills in something, too. |
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Title Kraken & Coins Medium Colored Pencil Size 30 x 46cm Intention The inspiration of this piece came from an Icelandic Krona that I got went I visited. I pulled references from Viking mythology, The kraken and Anglo-Saxon coins, to reflect on the differences of the currency they use in Iceland today. |
Title We're Up Medium Graphite, Colored Pencil Size 30 x 36cm Intention A photograph of my little sister was used as reference for this piece. This was part of an expedition that was centered around important women in our lives. The phrase "We're Up" is in reference to my sister and her generation of girls that will have a whole new impact on our society in the future. |
Title Mr. Ward Medium Graphite Size 20 x 25cm Intention This drawing is of an animator that has worked on several popular cartoons like Adventure Time, Pendleton Ward. He's an artist that I admire a lot. I wanted to experiment with hatching for this piece because it was a technique that I had not tried yet. |
Title Pretty Bird Medium Graphite Size 29 x 20cm Intention Blue and yellow macaws are one of my favorite birds. I admire the texture and pattern of their feathers and I want to recreate that with this piece. There is a lot of texture in their beaks as well which was another point of focus. Using graphite pushed me to define layers and value with out the aid of color. |
Title The Bottle, Cube, and Ball Medium Graphite Size 15 X 24.5cm Intention The three items in this still are things that hold memories of different things. The significance of these items are not the focus though, but rather the organic shapes and reflections. I wanted to capture this still as accurate as I could. |
Title Cup of Pencils Medium Colored Pencil, Gel pen Size 15 x 20cm Intention My goal with this piece was to attempt to add color to my still life drawings. I put extra effort into studying color theory to be able to achieve all the different tones because I was limited to 12 pencils. To add to that challenge I chose a glass cup, which was a material I had never attempted to draw before. |