revised thesis continued.
Potentiality.
The elements which are not fixed, combined with the elements which are fixed create a sort of Plasma . We are able to play with these forms and create our own realities in our lives, in our art, in our minds, our imagination, even within our dreams. We can create our own existences to a large degree, seize opportunities, create as artists, create beauty (or what we find subjectively to be beautiful), choose to live our lives in a positive way or negative. Our thoughts have the power to influence and change our environment and our surroundings. We have the ability to independently create our surroundings from the things that we have access to.
In my mind, potentiality relates to the concept of a non-fixed fate. Where we are tomorrow depends on where we are today, and so forth. How much is fate and how much is changeable? Is “fate” flexible as well, to a certain extent? Is it, for instance, like a moving and malleable entranceway?
This is what I am striving to allude to in my thesis paintings through multiple arcs and the softening of the edges of forms. The softening of the forms also relates to the influence of Gerhard Richter, dream-like associations, and my interest in submersion and “underwater” or “immersion” effects. The next reality, from one state of existence to another, may not be hard-edged and fixed, but malleable.
This also correlates with the concept of eternity, or the “afterlife” that we see not only in different religions but in mythology as well. The afterlife is consistently determined as dependent on the events and doings of the person in their earthly life.
Initial Thesis Intent.
The initial intent of the proposed “Plasma” and amorphous elements within my thesis paintings was to create an environment that could be seen as in flux, a malleable space. This was the reason for choosing the integration of abstract elements into the work. I have been looking at artists such as [insert artist that has the amorphous imagery and Francis Picabia, whose imagery depicts the layering of organic forms with the result of creating a type of submersed environment, similar to the underwater aquatic environment I was so initially drawn to.
It was of high importance to me that the space I would submerge figures into (both the rendered figures and the viewers) would be a place of abstract forms… or even “formless”… a “place” of dreams and creation. The ambiguity that would be inherently present would relate to the interpretation of such realities through our minds, our personal creations, our dreams. We create our own realities out of the reality, or “plasma” type space, we are born into. Around us, most things are in fact (at least to some degree) malleable, including the present and future. It was important to me that there be an interplay between the fixed elements and malleable ones in my work, analogous to these relationship in life.
The Hourglass as Symbol & Passageway
Initially, I planned my first and central painting to be an abstracted rendering of a bird’s eye view of an hourglass. The hourglass form, I hypothesized, would create a portal through which not only the bodies depicted (in the other two adjacent panels which I would then create) would be implied to move, but the viewer as well, through the act of standing before it, and gazing into it. The abstracted “hourglass” form would act as a vehicle, a channel through which the bodies would be associated with as having the potential of transporting them into a new reality, a new “TimeSpace” beyond the present “TimeSpaces” which I would create in each painting.
This passageway is referred to as the Liminal Passage, and correlates with the form of the hourglass in general. In a sense, our entire lives are in a state of liminality - the in between state after our conception and birth, and before our mortal death.
An hourglass both connects time and space as well as measures time in terms of physical bodies (grains of sand) falling from one reality, or “TimeSpace” (the upper formed glass, concave portion, when looking into it from a bird’s eye view) to the next reality, or “TimeSpace” (the lower formed glass, convex portion, when looking from a bird’s eye view as one traveling through it). The next reality, however, is only partially revealed, and is dependent on the present, which progressively opens and reveals, opens and reveals.
In the three thesis paintings, I am focusing on these pathways, journeys of the viewer through space and time, traveled by means of the gaze. The painting is a vehicle to open oneself to this abstract space. The viewer is immersed in the exhibition and becomes drawn into the imagery. The viewer is not forced into this space but may turn around and leave at any given moment. I have not intended the paintings to be gruesome or unpleasant, but visceral and intense.
The hourglass also comments through its very nature on the transient nature of existing bodies in any time and space. The hourglass is used in artwork throughout art history to comment on the mortal nature of humankind. Vanitas paintings especially use this symbol to comment on the transience of our physical reality and lives. This in turn draws the viewer’s attention to the implications of mortality, morality, and may lead to thoughts of religion, spirituality, and theories of an afterlife.
TimeSpace 1
I have been very strongly influenced by the imagery in Peter Rose’s video, a Lyric Suite, in which there is a film segment portraying just this concept. In the film, a man travels through an underground tunnel. His movement through the tunnel is very apparent, his form dark against the light entering through from the opening just ahead. However, this is not a still image. The opening is layered by means of film techniques, multiple times, and moves across the screen, hovering in a way. The result is ethereal and mysterious, intriguing to the viewer, aesthetically powerful. I am striving to achieve similar affects in my painting.
In TimeSpace 1, the linear arc was drawn and painted again and again, intersecting other arcs, forming parts of the concentric circles formed within each other to ultimately form the “tunnel” abstraction, or “liminal passageway” through which the viewer navigates.
It is important to note that the painting created only allows a limited opening (or, rather, openings - but a limited main and central opening) through which the viewer may glimpse the next space. The opening also is rendered to be in flux. This is shown through multiple rendered arcs, creating a sense of movement in the opening and passageway itself.
Through the rendering of multiple arc forms, it is implied that the passageway is not fixed. This has multiple associations: I believe that our reality is not fixed, our fate is not fixed. The future depends on the present, and so forth. The viewer embarks on this journey, and sees a somewhat still picture of a created moment in time and space through the painting’s imagery.
A painting lives and breathes as it is created, but once it is finished, or rather “resolved” to a satisfactory extent, as determined by the artist, it is then a fixed moment in time and space, its own reality, but yet motionless when separate from its relationship with the viewer. The viewer, through their gaze, in general, navigates the piece, and this interaction creates further life and dynamic energy associated with the work of art.
The Initially Proposed Submerged Rendered Bodies.
In proposed paintings #2 and 3, I had initially planned on rendering actual human bodies, one female, on the left side panel, adjacent to the central inverted “hourglass”, and one male, on the right side panel painting. In visualizing the submersion of the bodies, the reference images became to be a challenge, and an obstacle. I began extensively searching and referencing underwater photographs in general, with little success in finding any suitable imagery that was not overtly sexualized, overly general, awkwardly posed, or simply poor quality. I decided that I would much rather use my own reference photographs than those of others. I would rather have the initial reference shots be of my own compositions. The resultant paintings would not simply be photo-realistic; rather, I planned to deviate from the reference images where necessary and appropriate to my conceptual foundation for the thesis. I planned an underwater photo shoot for images of a female (myself as model) and male.
I planned for the two paintings of the figures to feed into the third, central, painting, which would in some way reflect the other two adjacent works. I considered depicted reflections of both figures shown as distortions, reflections within the “glass” of the “hourglass”. The reflections would allude to memory, “fate,” and unavoidable transition states such as death. The reflected figures would still be on the “womb” side of the hourglass or could have theoretically passed through it. The reflections of the figures (if rendered) within the “hourglass” would be distorted, abstract. They both would and would not be the figures themselves, due to their inherent characteristics mirroring those of the figures (prototypes), removed and duplicated as a reflection. A non-fixed reality (the “womb” abstract space the figures would be immersed in and interacting with) would imply potential (for instance, the openness to dreams, a sense of hope, optimism, room to breathe, create, develop internally and externally, and move forward).
In addition to the quest for underwater photographs of submerged bodies, I referenced films such as Peter Rose’s A Lyric Suite and Portishead’s Only You, which was filmed entirely underwater. I began exploring alternative ways of “submerging” forms within created imagery, such as that achieved through spatial depth in photography, in Elliot Erwitt’s work, and that of Gerhard Richter’s paintings, in which he creates a similar effect (as submersion within water) through distortion, abstraction, and blur.
As I progressed in my work on this project, especially after having begun TimeSpace 1, the focus of the project became to be less on creation and more on the transient and fluid nature of submersion itself (and a temporary suspension) within the created TimeSpace(s). The figures would be in effect be suspended, frozen in time/place/space through painting. I still, however, considered researching creation stories and myths since the creation element remained a significant part of the cycle I would be rendering. It would also be automatically alluded to in the work due to the created figurative elements I initially proposed. Where would my work then stand in relation to these stories? What associations would be made? I did not want to be illustrating a specific narrative about the creation itself of the figures I would be painting, and in addition did not want any element of Creationism to distract from the work’s true intent.
Also after I began painting TimeSpace 1, I began to question even more whether actual rendered human bodies were at all necessary in Paintings 2 and 3. I began to think that perhaps more abstract “bodies” would be more appropriate and engaging for both myself as artist and the viewer. I was flirting more and more with the idea of pure abstraction.
Ultimately I began to realize that depicting the figure in fact no longer had a place within these paintings. The viewer would interact with the paintings through their presence in front of them, exploring them, contemplating them, viewing them, entering them and navigating them through their gaze. There would be no need to render and represent further figures (in addition to the viewer that is) within the abstract paintings themselves. Painting and rendering the figure oftentimes draws so much attention to itself. My focus here would not be on depicting an accurate human form, or even an abstract one, a stylized one, or any one for that matter. The focus of my works would be on an exploration of created realities, and movement through them. The human experience, although important to the works, would not have to be illustrated through a figurative narrative on canvas.
The journey then became more of a journey through these concepts (of space-time, movement, relativity, and related), to find the parallels in both artwork and scientific thought, historical through contemporary, which have focused on these abstract concepts. I decided to dive further into an elemental independent study of Physics, which would coincide with the progress of my visual work.
My intent with the work from the initial start has been to transcend the mundane, the ordinary, the everyday. I have not wanted to depict everyday life or objects in this work. Later on, even the figure which I love so much, was indeed ultimately omitted. The work would not be that of portraiture or figurative, narrative autobiographies of myself as the artist, all things I had extensively explored in the past.
The figures at this point, I felt, would be a hindrance to the refined objective of the thesis work. I did not want the figures to draw attention to themselves, if rendered, and have the focus of the work be on them and any sort of realism.
I have explored the figure extensively up until this point: realistically with life studies, through distortion, deformation, fragmentation, stylization, abstraction, and other methods of exploring and rendering form. I have explored impressionism, cubism, surrealism, figurative narratives, portraiture, Iconography. The figure as subject matter within the painting always dominates whatever other components may be present in the piece. This is not necessarily a negative in itself, but in these works, a dominating figure within the work would be detrimental to its nature as expansive and abstract. I decided that I did not want to create virtual characters that would be living and breathing within these created realities of illusionistic time and place, apart from the actual abstract elements themselves.
This being said, it is important to note that abstract elements themselves within paintings often have the capability and may appear figurative by association. In this respect, the viewer may impose “identities” to abstract elements by associating them with the figure, or other physical things. The true identity, however, of the forms depicted within my paintings aims at ambiguity, as the space and passageways are themselves ambiguous, multi-faceted and possess multiple layers of symbology and meaning, studied through different fields and perspectives. My aim is to create realities within which the viewer may navigate as they wish, without the oppression of realistic objects, places, people, that would tie them to the physical time and place of their worldly existence.
It is inevitable that a certain reflection of my life experience and personal associations with forms, attachment to particular forms and symbols, is reflected in the work, but autobiography is not its main intent. In the works, I hope for an element of timelessness, which reaches, or attempts to reach at least, into infinity.
At the mid-thesis review, my panel agreed that rendered figures were not at all necessary. The viewer, as we were discussing, becomes the figure in the work. I was excited to hear this feedback and encouragement into abstraction and away from direct figuration. After discussion with my Thesis Advisor, from that point on, the work became less about submersion and of rendered figures within the paintings but more about a movement through abstract time and space, more about the relationship and interaction between the viewer and the rendered abstract spaces. The submersion of the viewers themselves became one of my main focal points, rather than painted bodies.
Although I have a love for the human form, and respect its depiction in art, I felt that with this work, I should move into more conceptual territory, and into abstraction, pure time, space, color, line, form, reality as apart from the rendered human form. I began looking even more at the Abstract Expressionists and their dynamic exploration of these formal elements. (The underwater photography plans, consequently, were no longer applicable, or necessary).
The elements which are not fixed, combined with the elements which are fixed create a sort of Plasma . We are able to play with these forms and create our own realities in our lives, in our art, in our minds, our imagination, even within our dreams. We can create our own existences to a large degree, seize opportunities, create as artists, create beauty (or what we find subjectively to be beautiful), choose to live our lives in a positive way or negative. Our thoughts have the power to influence and change our environment and our surroundings. We have the ability to independently create our surroundings from the things that we have access to.
In my mind, potentiality relates to the concept of a non-fixed fate. Where we are tomorrow depends on where we are today, and so forth. How much is fate and how much is changeable? Is “fate” flexible as well, to a certain extent? Is it, for instance, like a moving and malleable entranceway?
This is what I am striving to allude to in my thesis paintings through multiple arcs and the softening of the edges of forms. The softening of the forms also relates to the influence of Gerhard Richter, dream-like associations, and my interest in submersion and “underwater” or “immersion” effects. The next reality, from one state of existence to another, may not be hard-edged and fixed, but malleable.
This also correlates with the concept of eternity, or the “afterlife” that we see not only in different religions but in mythology as well. The afterlife is consistently determined as dependent on the events and doings of the person in their earthly life.
Initial Thesis Intent.
The initial intent of the proposed “Plasma” and amorphous elements within my thesis paintings was to create an environment that could be seen as in flux, a malleable space. This was the reason for choosing the integration of abstract elements into the work. I have been looking at artists such as [insert artist that has the amorphous imagery and Francis Picabia, whose imagery depicts the layering of organic forms with the result of creating a type of submersed environment, similar to the underwater aquatic environment I was so initially drawn to.
It was of high importance to me that the space I would submerge figures into (both the rendered figures and the viewers) would be a place of abstract forms… or even “formless”… a “place” of dreams and creation. The ambiguity that would be inherently present would relate to the interpretation of such realities through our minds, our personal creations, our dreams. We create our own realities out of the reality, or “plasma” type space, we are born into. Around us, most things are in fact (at least to some degree) malleable, including the present and future. It was important to me that there be an interplay between the fixed elements and malleable ones in my work, analogous to these relationship in life.
The Hourglass as Symbol & Passageway
Initially, I planned my first and central painting to be an abstracted rendering of a bird’s eye view of an hourglass. The hourglass form, I hypothesized, would create a portal through which not only the bodies depicted (in the other two adjacent panels which I would then create) would be implied to move, but the viewer as well, through the act of standing before it, and gazing into it. The abstracted “hourglass” form would act as a vehicle, a channel through which the bodies would be associated with as having the potential of transporting them into a new reality, a new “TimeSpace” beyond the present “TimeSpaces” which I would create in each painting.
This passageway is referred to as the Liminal Passage, and correlates with the form of the hourglass in general. In a sense, our entire lives are in a state of liminality - the in between state after our conception and birth, and before our mortal death.
An hourglass both connects time and space as well as measures time in terms of physical bodies (grains of sand) falling from one reality, or “TimeSpace” (the upper formed glass, concave portion, when looking into it from a bird’s eye view) to the next reality, or “TimeSpace” (the lower formed glass, convex portion, when looking from a bird’s eye view as one traveling through it). The next reality, however, is only partially revealed, and is dependent on the present, which progressively opens and reveals, opens and reveals.
In the three thesis paintings, I am focusing on these pathways, journeys of the viewer through space and time, traveled by means of the gaze. The painting is a vehicle to open oneself to this abstract space. The viewer is immersed in the exhibition and becomes drawn into the imagery. The viewer is not forced into this space but may turn around and leave at any given moment. I have not intended the paintings to be gruesome or unpleasant, but visceral and intense.
The hourglass also comments through its very nature on the transient nature of existing bodies in any time and space. The hourglass is used in artwork throughout art history to comment on the mortal nature of humankind. Vanitas paintings especially use this symbol to comment on the transience of our physical reality and lives. This in turn draws the viewer’s attention to the implications of mortality, morality, and may lead to thoughts of religion, spirituality, and theories of an afterlife.
TimeSpace 1
I have been very strongly influenced by the imagery in Peter Rose’s video, a Lyric Suite, in which there is a film segment portraying just this concept. In the film, a man travels through an underground tunnel. His movement through the tunnel is very apparent, his form dark against the light entering through from the opening just ahead. However, this is not a still image. The opening is layered by means of film techniques, multiple times, and moves across the screen, hovering in a way. The result is ethereal and mysterious, intriguing to the viewer, aesthetically powerful. I am striving to achieve similar affects in my painting.
In TimeSpace 1, the linear arc was drawn and painted again and again, intersecting other arcs, forming parts of the concentric circles formed within each other to ultimately form the “tunnel” abstraction, or “liminal passageway” through which the viewer navigates.
It is important to note that the painting created only allows a limited opening (or, rather, openings - but a limited main and central opening) through which the viewer may glimpse the next space. The opening also is rendered to be in flux. This is shown through multiple rendered arcs, creating a sense of movement in the opening and passageway itself.
Through the rendering of multiple arc forms, it is implied that the passageway is not fixed. This has multiple associations: I believe that our reality is not fixed, our fate is not fixed. The future depends on the present, and so forth. The viewer embarks on this journey, and sees a somewhat still picture of a created moment in time and space through the painting’s imagery.
A painting lives and breathes as it is created, but once it is finished, or rather “resolved” to a satisfactory extent, as determined by the artist, it is then a fixed moment in time and space, its own reality, but yet motionless when separate from its relationship with the viewer. The viewer, through their gaze, in general, navigates the piece, and this interaction creates further life and dynamic energy associated with the work of art.
The Initially Proposed Submerged Rendered Bodies.
In proposed paintings #2 and 3, I had initially planned on rendering actual human bodies, one female, on the left side panel, adjacent to the central inverted “hourglass”, and one male, on the right side panel painting. In visualizing the submersion of the bodies, the reference images became to be a challenge, and an obstacle. I began extensively searching and referencing underwater photographs in general, with little success in finding any suitable imagery that was not overtly sexualized, overly general, awkwardly posed, or simply poor quality. I decided that I would much rather use my own reference photographs than those of others. I would rather have the initial reference shots be of my own compositions. The resultant paintings would not simply be photo-realistic; rather, I planned to deviate from the reference images where necessary and appropriate to my conceptual foundation for the thesis. I planned an underwater photo shoot for images of a female (myself as model) and male.
I planned for the two paintings of the figures to feed into the third, central, painting, which would in some way reflect the other two adjacent works. I considered depicted reflections of both figures shown as distortions, reflections within the “glass” of the “hourglass”. The reflections would allude to memory, “fate,” and unavoidable transition states such as death. The reflected figures would still be on the “womb” side of the hourglass or could have theoretically passed through it. The reflections of the figures (if rendered) within the “hourglass” would be distorted, abstract. They both would and would not be the figures themselves, due to their inherent characteristics mirroring those of the figures (prototypes), removed and duplicated as a reflection. A non-fixed reality (the “womb” abstract space the figures would be immersed in and interacting with) would imply potential (for instance, the openness to dreams, a sense of hope, optimism, room to breathe, create, develop internally and externally, and move forward).
In addition to the quest for underwater photographs of submerged bodies, I referenced films such as Peter Rose’s A Lyric Suite and Portishead’s Only You, which was filmed entirely underwater. I began exploring alternative ways of “submerging” forms within created imagery, such as that achieved through spatial depth in photography, in Elliot Erwitt’s work, and that of Gerhard Richter’s paintings, in which he creates a similar effect (as submersion within water) through distortion, abstraction, and blur.
As I progressed in my work on this project, especially after having begun TimeSpace 1, the focus of the project became to be less on creation and more on the transient and fluid nature of submersion itself (and a temporary suspension) within the created TimeSpace(s). The figures would be in effect be suspended, frozen in time/place/space through painting. I still, however, considered researching creation stories and myths since the creation element remained a significant part of the cycle I would be rendering. It would also be automatically alluded to in the work due to the created figurative elements I initially proposed. Where would my work then stand in relation to these stories? What associations would be made? I did not want to be illustrating a specific narrative about the creation itself of the figures I would be painting, and in addition did not want any element of Creationism to distract from the work’s true intent.
Also after I began painting TimeSpace 1, I began to question even more whether actual rendered human bodies were at all necessary in Paintings 2 and 3. I began to think that perhaps more abstract “bodies” would be more appropriate and engaging for both myself as artist and the viewer. I was flirting more and more with the idea of pure abstraction.
Ultimately I began to realize that depicting the figure in fact no longer had a place within these paintings. The viewer would interact with the paintings through their presence in front of them, exploring them, contemplating them, viewing them, entering them and navigating them through their gaze. There would be no need to render and represent further figures (in addition to the viewer that is) within the abstract paintings themselves. Painting and rendering the figure oftentimes draws so much attention to itself. My focus here would not be on depicting an accurate human form, or even an abstract one, a stylized one, or any one for that matter. The focus of my works would be on an exploration of created realities, and movement through them. The human experience, although important to the works, would not have to be illustrated through a figurative narrative on canvas.
The journey then became more of a journey through these concepts (of space-time, movement, relativity, and related), to find the parallels in both artwork and scientific thought, historical through contemporary, which have focused on these abstract concepts. I decided to dive further into an elemental independent study of Physics, which would coincide with the progress of my visual work.
My intent with the work from the initial start has been to transcend the mundane, the ordinary, the everyday. I have not wanted to depict everyday life or objects in this work. Later on, even the figure which I love so much, was indeed ultimately omitted. The work would not be that of portraiture or figurative, narrative autobiographies of myself as the artist, all things I had extensively explored in the past.
The figures at this point, I felt, would be a hindrance to the refined objective of the thesis work. I did not want the figures to draw attention to themselves, if rendered, and have the focus of the work be on them and any sort of realism.
I have explored the figure extensively up until this point: realistically with life studies, through distortion, deformation, fragmentation, stylization, abstraction, and other methods of exploring and rendering form. I have explored impressionism, cubism, surrealism, figurative narratives, portraiture, Iconography. The figure as subject matter within the painting always dominates whatever other components may be present in the piece. This is not necessarily a negative in itself, but in these works, a dominating figure within the work would be detrimental to its nature as expansive and abstract. I decided that I did not want to create virtual characters that would be living and breathing within these created realities of illusionistic time and place, apart from the actual abstract elements themselves.
This being said, it is important to note that abstract elements themselves within paintings often have the capability and may appear figurative by association. In this respect, the viewer may impose “identities” to abstract elements by associating them with the figure, or other physical things. The true identity, however, of the forms depicted within my paintings aims at ambiguity, as the space and passageways are themselves ambiguous, multi-faceted and possess multiple layers of symbology and meaning, studied through different fields and perspectives. My aim is to create realities within which the viewer may navigate as they wish, without the oppression of realistic objects, places, people, that would tie them to the physical time and place of their worldly existence.
It is inevitable that a certain reflection of my life experience and personal associations with forms, attachment to particular forms and symbols, is reflected in the work, but autobiography is not its main intent. In the works, I hope for an element of timelessness, which reaches, or attempts to reach at least, into infinity.
At the mid-thesis review, my panel agreed that rendered figures were not at all necessary. The viewer, as we were discussing, becomes the figure in the work. I was excited to hear this feedback and encouragement into abstraction and away from direct figuration. After discussion with my Thesis Advisor, from that point on, the work became less about submersion and of rendered figures within the paintings but more about a movement through abstract time and space, more about the relationship and interaction between the viewer and the rendered abstract spaces. The submersion of the viewers themselves became one of my main focal points, rather than painted bodies.
Although I have a love for the human form, and respect its depiction in art, I felt that with this work, I should move into more conceptual territory, and into abstraction, pure time, space, color, line, form, reality as apart from the rendered human form. I began looking even more at the Abstract Expressionists and their dynamic exploration of these formal elements. (The underwater photography plans, consequently, were no longer applicable, or necessary).