Artist Philosophy Paper GO
So I've got to write an "Artist Philosophy" paper for my writing for artists class and I've decided to start it in LJ since I don't really have to follow any rules and I can just begin to get some ideas out, as well as share this rough draft with you. It's supposed to be a short general essay about how I came to be an artist/why art/stuff like that. So yeah. Henyways I've been rolling these ideas around for a while so I might as well get them out here.
So I guess I should start with the path I've taken to get where I am today in terms of myself as an artist. I began toying with the idea of producing art mid to late in my high school career. Back then my two main passions were art and science, particularly physics and quantum mechanics of which I voraciously read whatever I could get my hands on. Exposure to modern physics greatly influenced early on my conceptual growth philosophically as well as artistically as I became concerned with the subtle ways in which we percieve reality and our everyday life as well. My main art teacher in high school, Giovanna DeSantis also greatly influenced me in providing a strong foundation to begin my college career with. Mrs. DeSantis was a very demanding teacher and her direction taught me how to set high demands for myself. I often liken her teaching style to that of a mother bird pushing its child out of the nest to see if it can fly.
Entering college, I was still undecided as to whether I wanted to pursue a physics or an art degree. I already had some momentum in my artistic progression and the demands for a physics major in terms of additional math courses was such that I would not have had time to pursue art enough to satisfy my growing hunger for it, so taking funamental art courses at first felt the most natural for me. I was still able to read and study physics on my own time which would then continue to feed my conceptual body. Initially I began my artistic pursuits with the idea of a digital art concentration in mind, as it was a medium that was accessible to me and I was already fairly familiar with a few programs from several classes I had taken in high school. After taking a few semesters of digital classes, I felt as if i needed to improve my poor drawing skills so I began taking drawing courses alongside my digital pursuits. After spending a few more semesters of drawing classes I actually found drawing to be one of my strengths. I eventually came under the study of Walter Kravitz and then I felt that I should shift towards a drawing concentration. After taking Walter's class however, he recommended I begin taking painting classes, which I did the following semester under Paula Crawford, and after a semester with Paula she convinced me to pursue painting, which more or less brings me to the position I am now in my artistic progression.
My most recent growth has resulted somewhat from a series of a few minor mental breakdowns. The reason for this comes from something of an artistic schism between two internal halves that initially would appear to be in opposition- myself as a romantic painter and myself as an almost coldly conceptual thinker. The first breakdown occurred after I produced the final assignment during my first semester of painting with Paula. After I had visited Paula’s studio earlier that semester, her work relating to the intersection of order and chaos left me obsessed with the nuances of that subject as well as the conflict of painting objectively vs. painting subjectively. I based the painting off of the idea of cellular automata, mathematical phenomena that propagate as dictated by simple rules but can yield results that range from ordered patterns to completely random arrays. My attempt in the painting was to produce something that would be objectively chaotic. The key to this being that the perceived element of order (the “rule”) would be the element that also generates chaos within the confines of the canvas as opposed to the artist’s will generating a subjective and, in what was my opinion, a false sense of chaos. The breakdown occurred when after production of the piece I began to mentally refine the concept along objective lines. Taking step after mental step of refinement of the concept, I had a prescient moment of what I viewed to be my own artistic death as I further removed myself from the will of the act toward the pursuit of objectivity. Having flown to close to the sun, I fell into an exceedingly nihilistic mental state, from here I resolved that I needed to reconcile my nihilistic beliefs with my need for local, everyday meaning.
From this point I began thinking more about the paint itself, and eventually came upon my most recent series of large-scale palette-knife paintings. I had grown considerably as a painter and the “romantic painter” side of me really began to emerge. I began to deal with concepts of sensuality and intimacy through these paintings, as well as beginning to think about how the viewer interacts with the painting. The second breakdown began to occur around the middle of the second semester of painting my palette-knife paintings. As the series had progressed the concept had also subtly changed from painting to painting and what initially felt raw and passionate had become somewhat more mechanical and formulaic. At this point I began to be overwhelmed with a feeling of being lost in my artwork. I was at a loss for how to continue working on my current series. At the same time, while it was almost two years after my first episode, I had by no means abandoned my deep-seated nihilistic beliefs and was still working on developing a conceptual tool that would allow me to describe how local meaning can exist in a reality without absolute meaning. At this point I re-implemented an idea from a much earlier drawing class and developed a Plexiglas installment which approached my goal of my sought after conceptual tool. Instead of completely committing to the series I had been working on for almost a year, I decided to place it on hold and I began attempting to interpret my conceptual tool through painting. Ultimately my goal with this new train of though is to intersect it with my larger series in an attempt to reconcile my two artistic halves at a later point.
(and here's my crappy and pretentious last paragraph for now as i have to leave for class)
The question remains as to why I even paint, or even produce any kind of art to begin with. I have a strong desire to understand the world around me as well as to share what I find with others. My art provides me with a way to come to terms with reality in a non-linear way and communicate with others without the limitations of conventional language, as well as leave evidence of my own ego in my path.
So I guess I should start with the path I've taken to get where I am today in terms of myself as an artist. I began toying with the idea of producing art mid to late in my high school career. Back then my two main passions were art and science, particularly physics and quantum mechanics of which I voraciously read whatever I could get my hands on. Exposure to modern physics greatly influenced early on my conceptual growth philosophically as well as artistically as I became concerned with the subtle ways in which we percieve reality and our everyday life as well. My main art teacher in high school, Giovanna DeSantis also greatly influenced me in providing a strong foundation to begin my college career with. Mrs. DeSantis was a very demanding teacher and her direction taught me how to set high demands for myself. I often liken her teaching style to that of a mother bird pushing its child out of the nest to see if it can fly.
Entering college, I was still undecided as to whether I wanted to pursue a physics or an art degree. I already had some momentum in my artistic progression and the demands for a physics major in terms of additional math courses was such that I would not have had time to pursue art enough to satisfy my growing hunger for it, so taking funamental art courses at first felt the most natural for me. I was still able to read and study physics on my own time which would then continue to feed my conceptual body. Initially I began my artistic pursuits with the idea of a digital art concentration in mind, as it was a medium that was accessible to me and I was already fairly familiar with a few programs from several classes I had taken in high school. After taking a few semesters of digital classes, I felt as if i needed to improve my poor drawing skills so I began taking drawing courses alongside my digital pursuits. After spending a few more semesters of drawing classes I actually found drawing to be one of my strengths. I eventually came under the study of Walter Kravitz and then I felt that I should shift towards a drawing concentration. After taking Walter's class however, he recommended I begin taking painting classes, which I did the following semester under Paula Crawford, and after a semester with Paula she convinced me to pursue painting, which more or less brings me to the position I am now in my artistic progression.
My most recent growth has resulted somewhat from a series of a few minor mental breakdowns. The reason for this comes from something of an artistic schism between two internal halves that initially would appear to be in opposition- myself as a romantic painter and myself as an almost coldly conceptual thinker. The first breakdown occurred after I produced the final assignment during my first semester of painting with Paula. After I had visited Paula’s studio earlier that semester, her work relating to the intersection of order and chaos left me obsessed with the nuances of that subject as well as the conflict of painting objectively vs. painting subjectively. I based the painting off of the idea of cellular automata, mathematical phenomena that propagate as dictated by simple rules but can yield results that range from ordered patterns to completely random arrays. My attempt in the painting was to produce something that would be objectively chaotic. The key to this being that the perceived element of order (the “rule”) would be the element that also generates chaos within the confines of the canvas as opposed to the artist’s will generating a subjective and, in what was my opinion, a false sense of chaos. The breakdown occurred when after production of the piece I began to mentally refine the concept along objective lines. Taking step after mental step of refinement of the concept, I had a prescient moment of what I viewed to be my own artistic death as I further removed myself from the will of the act toward the pursuit of objectivity. Having flown to close to the sun, I fell into an exceedingly nihilistic mental state, from here I resolved that I needed to reconcile my nihilistic beliefs with my need for local, everyday meaning.
From this point I began thinking more about the paint itself, and eventually came upon my most recent series of large-scale palette-knife paintings. I had grown considerably as a painter and the “romantic painter” side of me really began to emerge. I began to deal with concepts of sensuality and intimacy through these paintings, as well as beginning to think about how the viewer interacts with the painting. The second breakdown began to occur around the middle of the second semester of painting my palette-knife paintings. As the series had progressed the concept had also subtly changed from painting to painting and what initially felt raw and passionate had become somewhat more mechanical and formulaic. At this point I began to be overwhelmed with a feeling of being lost in my artwork. I was at a loss for how to continue working on my current series. At the same time, while it was almost two years after my first episode, I had by no means abandoned my deep-seated nihilistic beliefs and was still working on developing a conceptual tool that would allow me to describe how local meaning can exist in a reality without absolute meaning. At this point I re-implemented an idea from a much earlier drawing class and developed a Plexiglas installment which approached my goal of my sought after conceptual tool. Instead of completely committing to the series I had been working on for almost a year, I decided to place it on hold and I began attempting to interpret my conceptual tool through painting. Ultimately my goal with this new train of though is to intersect it with my larger series in an attempt to reconcile my two artistic halves at a later point.
(and here's my crappy and pretentious last paragraph for now as i have to leave for class)
The question remains as to why I even paint, or even produce any kind of art to begin with. I have a strong desire to understand the world around me as well as to share what I find with others. My art provides me with a way to come to terms with reality in a non-linear way and communicate with others without the limitations of conventional language, as well as leave evidence of my own ego in my path.