Thesis Defense
This took fucking forever to type into here. So read it. Also, much of my portfolio can be found here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/81886132@N00/
Throughout the past year, I have had the experience of telling people that I am a senior at Clark studying art. Invariably, one of the first questions asked is "What kind of art do you do?" It has been my experience that the expected answer is usually something palatable, relatable, or at least decidedly not morbid. When I answer with a phrase like "long story short, I paint dead birds", the reactions tend to be all over the map. The conversation can then play out in a variety of ways, depending on whether the questioner is intrigued or horrified. There has been shocked incredulity, fervent recognition, and agreement, and most other reactions in between.
One question always arises: "Why paint dead birds?" In all honesty, I did not see this as my thesis topic in the beginning of the school year. My abiding interest until that time had been the question of what is natural behavior. We go about our lives as human beings, engaged in a set of rituals and activities that we consider mundane. Get out of bed, flush the toilet, check our email, kiss the wife and kids goodbye, and drive to work, and on and on forever. Some of my previous artwork set out to question how natural these actions really are. How natural is it for me to be sitting at a desk for 8 hours a day at a job? To eat a Twinkie on my lunch break? To use a car, or further, offer a friend a ride to work? To develop meaningful peer relationships? To be categorized into a set of behaviors by gender? To me, it seemed as though we have overridden our own natures and natural impulses for a social construct that allows us to live in an unnatural order.
The Project
The project began as a consideration of the spoils of a conquest. Dead birds, deforested landscapes,polluted oceans, genetically modified life, and human kind as arbiter of all of these things. What is my, your, our accumulated footprint on the natural world? What effect is being had, and of what are we even aware? I would have been foolish to not realize that this is a theme that is already in the cultural and artistic zeitgeist. It has infiltrated the media outlets. Growing up, there were commercial pleas to turn off our lights, plant trees, and support the Arbor Day Foundation, and recycle (the 21st century's 3 Rs). If nothing is more indicative, there were jingles for those things. Hell, there was even a cartoon!
I'd be amiss if I did not mention that "An Inconvenient Truth" debuted during my time at Clark, the 'Green Revolution' popped up all over in consumer culture, and gas prices skyrocketed. I've often been told that artist consciously or unconsciously extend their cultural and social antennae, picking up on the relevant signals of our time, and translating them onto canvas as a record of our condition. The receive, clarify, and present these concepts for general consumption, making the concerns plaguing us tangible and conversable. These paintings are doing just that. In this case, my abiding interest filtered the messages received, changing the project that I had set out to paint. It was not about consequences: cause and effect, rather than questions and postulation. It was more final, less hopeful.
Once I started with birds, I really couldn't stop. I attribute this is part to having painted the taxidermied birds kept in the Traina center for three years prior. They were a critical part of my development as a painter, and my fall back when I needed a quick subject for painting. The choice to paint dead birds was also functional--I hadn't found the next piece to paint, so I kept doing birds. My original plan was two or three paintings interspersed in a salon style hanging. This became three paintings of birds hung as a triptych. After a certain point, fueled both by the reaction to these birds and my lack of other metaphors, the birds began to stick. I was getting a reputation as the guy who painted dead birds. It was becoming a compulsive part of my personality. The images were also easily attainable. Type "dead birds" into flickr. com, and suddenly you're set for a thesis. Go figure.
I stuck with birds because I found them to be such a compelling metaphor for the points that I felt deserved a voice within my paintings. Consider the bird. It is a delicate animal, highly symbolic in most global cultures. At the movies, the scene for a beautiful day is set by the birds chirping in the trees. Images of birds flying overhead is often symbolic of hope and freedom. Our national seal is a bird. We eat turkey at one of the most American holidays on the calendar. Birds are entrenched in our national subconscious as significant parts of the natural world. Even in cities, the birds are among the few parts of nature that consistently thrive and triumph. In a world so removed from nature, to be that connecting symbol means to have power.
Dead birds, of course, carry thier own symbolism and connections as well. Canaries were brought into coal mines as early detectors of poisonous gas. If the canary died, the miners would leave. Rachel Carson noticed one summer that there were fewer birds chirping in the spring. Meanwhile, Peregrine Falcons and California Condors died at an astounding rate during the 50's and 60's. These two events exposed the dangers of the pesticide DDT. In more recent times, dead birds are the early warning signs for the appearance of West Nile Virus and were carries of SARS, and stories of dead birds found infected were all over local and national news. Surely, a dead bird is a sign of bad things ahead. This is what made the image so striking and so useful in the theme of my painting. It's them first. It's always them first, and if we don't pay attention, its us next.
The Media and Technique
The paintings themselves are done in oil paint, the media with which I have worked for most of my 4 years at Clark. Most of the painting have aspects of my background in traditional and a la prima oil painting, mainly in their figurative aspects. It was important to me that the images should stand apart as strongly represented and descriptively painted. The viewer has to be aware of the subject matter of each painting.
My handling of the media, however, has been much different that in past years. I have been much looser in my application of paint and in the style of painting, allowing some brush strokes and paint textures to define forms that I would have otherwise individually described. This is most pronounced in the feathers of the birds, creating an effect of errant, ruffled, or downy feathers.
There is also an increased use of turpentine as media. I credit part of this to having taken a watercolor class this semester, and wanting to translate some of my new knowledge into a realm in which I have more experience. The looseness of the "turped" oil paint allwed me to be free of the exacting specificity in which I often find myself caught. Similarly, it intereacted with tcanvas and other media in novel ways, which I found a use for in the paintings. Specifically, I am referring to two properties of turpentine that were useful. One is the way in which turpentine drips down and through a painting, cutting parts of established paintings with its thinning properties. Combined with the unique visual appearance the dripping takes on were extrememly useful in creating a representation of decay and pollution that is so central to my work.
I also used turpentine to create a suspended environment for pigment, which reacted to drying and modification in a unique way. I covered large areas of the canvas with turpentine, and then introduced pigment that had been similarly diluted. Afterwards, I would hold a lamp above areas of the painting to expedite the drying process. The curious reaction of the turpentine to the heat of the lamp, specifically the ways in which it spread and pooled, became integral to several of my paintings.
I have also begun introducing spray paint to my paintings. This is both function-- to cover large portions of a failed painting or introduce a new scene, as well as aesthetic-- to create blended effects and introduce new planes of texture and color. The unruliness of the spray paint lent itself to the general conflict between textures and styles that has become a signature of my work during the second semester. It also forced me to abandon control of the final painting, allowing the media to be the media, and me to be the facilitator of the painting rather than the fastidious conductor.
The meeting point of my content and technique are environments in which mimetic dead birds are suspended in front of chaotic and chromatically muddy backdrops, often laid over layers of spray paint, drawing, or other paintings. The sense of a definite place is compromised for a more allegorical understanding of location, and the fame of reference is meant to shift within each painting. While my inspiration comes from "cause and effect", the resulting effect in the paintings is meant to be subjective and ambiguous. As I wrote before, dead birds are incredibly loaded images, and it would be foolhardy of me to suggest that the viewer only carry my associations into their viewing. These mixed associations and emotions, I believe, will prove useful in the final showing of the work, allowing the paintings to play off a series of emotions and visual relationships.
The Influences
During the first semester of this project, I read an article about art after the death of the image. The message of the article stuck with me, and I constantly measured my artwork against it, trying to find purpose and meaning in the art I have been making. Specifically, the article said that art as image or record had ended, and that a new era for art had begun. Its up to today's artists to create meaning and value for today's art. My thought was that art should not just be, but rather that it should DO. Art has been a vehicle for the italicization of issues in our culture, and I believe that the purpose of art (or at least my art) is to move further along those lines, acting as a tool of response and conversation to the world around us.
Phil Borges, who is a photographer tied to the Bridges Project furthered my belief that my artwork should tie itself to responsible social issues and provide a visual voice for good works. Borges uses his photography to document indigenous people who are loosing their cultural voices as a result of encroaching development and rapid globalization. It ranges from tribal elders who are the last people to speak their language to portraits of children who have never learned the native tongue of their parents. They are stunning images, but more importantly serve in the hands of a project bigger than the "art world".
Earlier in my artistic development, I came across Robert and Shania Parke Harrison. Their constructed photography ties specifically to issues of human stewardship over the earth, and the complex and tragic relationship that we have r might develop with the environment. These photographs resonated deeply with me, and I knew that they were onto something very important and relevant. Perhaps we met in the right place at the right time-- an intersection of my artistic development, workload, frustrations, and natural questioning of our society. Regardless, they have impacted the direction in which I have developed as an artist.
The artist that set off my entire ideological and artistic pursuit is Alexis Rockman. While I no longer find myself specifically tied to his message and artwork, he warrants mention for starting me in on the idea of environmentalist artwork. His paintings are as much artistic ventures as they are diagrams of a world to-be: Technicolor snapshots of a post apocalyptic earths, worlds after humans are finished, and the results of our decisions making today.
The Conclusion
My images are meant to be immediately available to the viewer. I want the viewer to react to the dead birds first. The are then meant to unfold the issue, considering why these birds are dead. Finally, I want the viewer to find their place within the images. How do they relate to the damage done, and what can we do to solve the crises at hand?
The paintings are as much images as they are a call to action. The italicize the issue. They are meant to ask "what are we doing to solve the problems we have caused, and the problems that lie ahead?" They are not academic postulations, nor are they art historical references. They are saying "Now. Here. This. What are you going to do"?
http://www.flickr.com/photos/81886132@N00/
Throughout the past year, I have had the experience of telling people that I am a senior at Clark studying art. Invariably, one of the first questions asked is "What kind of art do you do?" It has been my experience that the expected answer is usually something palatable, relatable, or at least decidedly not morbid. When I answer with a phrase like "long story short, I paint dead birds", the reactions tend to be all over the map. The conversation can then play out in a variety of ways, depending on whether the questioner is intrigued or horrified. There has been shocked incredulity, fervent recognition, and agreement, and most other reactions in between.
One question always arises: "Why paint dead birds?" In all honesty, I did not see this as my thesis topic in the beginning of the school year. My abiding interest until that time had been the question of what is natural behavior. We go about our lives as human beings, engaged in a set of rituals and activities that we consider mundane. Get out of bed, flush the toilet, check our email, kiss the wife and kids goodbye, and drive to work, and on and on forever. Some of my previous artwork set out to question how natural these actions really are. How natural is it for me to be sitting at a desk for 8 hours a day at a job? To eat a Twinkie on my lunch break? To use a car, or further, offer a friend a ride to work? To develop meaningful peer relationships? To be categorized into a set of behaviors by gender? To me, it seemed as though we have overridden our own natures and natural impulses for a social construct that allows us to live in an unnatural order.
The Project
The project began as a consideration of the spoils of a conquest. Dead birds, deforested landscapes,polluted oceans, genetically modified life, and human kind as arbiter of all of these things. What is my, your, our accumulated footprint on the natural world? What effect is being had, and of what are we even aware? I would have been foolish to not realize that this is a theme that is already in the cultural and artistic zeitgeist. It has infiltrated the media outlets. Growing up, there were commercial pleas to turn off our lights, plant trees, and support the Arbor Day Foundation, and recycle (the 21st century's 3 Rs). If nothing is more indicative, there were jingles for those things. Hell, there was even a cartoon!
I'd be amiss if I did not mention that "An Inconvenient Truth" debuted during my time at Clark, the 'Green Revolution' popped up all over in consumer culture, and gas prices skyrocketed. I've often been told that artist consciously or unconsciously extend their cultural and social antennae, picking up on the relevant signals of our time, and translating them onto canvas as a record of our condition. The receive, clarify, and present these concepts for general consumption, making the concerns plaguing us tangible and conversable. These paintings are doing just that. In this case, my abiding interest filtered the messages received, changing the project that I had set out to paint. It was not about consequences: cause and effect, rather than questions and postulation. It was more final, less hopeful.
Once I started with birds, I really couldn't stop. I attribute this is part to having painted the taxidermied birds kept in the Traina center for three years prior. They were a critical part of my development as a painter, and my fall back when I needed a quick subject for painting. The choice to paint dead birds was also functional--I hadn't found the next piece to paint, so I kept doing birds. My original plan was two or three paintings interspersed in a salon style hanging. This became three paintings of birds hung as a triptych. After a certain point, fueled both by the reaction to these birds and my lack of other metaphors, the birds began to stick. I was getting a reputation as the guy who painted dead birds. It was becoming a compulsive part of my personality. The images were also easily attainable. Type "dead birds" into flickr. com, and suddenly you're set for a thesis. Go figure.
I stuck with birds because I found them to be such a compelling metaphor for the points that I felt deserved a voice within my paintings. Consider the bird. It is a delicate animal, highly symbolic in most global cultures. At the movies, the scene for a beautiful day is set by the birds chirping in the trees. Images of birds flying overhead is often symbolic of hope and freedom. Our national seal is a bird. We eat turkey at one of the most American holidays on the calendar. Birds are entrenched in our national subconscious as significant parts of the natural world. Even in cities, the birds are among the few parts of nature that consistently thrive and triumph. In a world so removed from nature, to be that connecting symbol means to have power.
Dead birds, of course, carry thier own symbolism and connections as well. Canaries were brought into coal mines as early detectors of poisonous gas. If the canary died, the miners would leave. Rachel Carson noticed one summer that there were fewer birds chirping in the spring. Meanwhile, Peregrine Falcons and California Condors died at an astounding rate during the 50's and 60's. These two events exposed the dangers of the pesticide DDT. In more recent times, dead birds are the early warning signs for the appearance of West Nile Virus and were carries of SARS, and stories of dead birds found infected were all over local and national news. Surely, a dead bird is a sign of bad things ahead. This is what made the image so striking and so useful in the theme of my painting. It's them first. It's always them first, and if we don't pay attention, its us next.
The Media and Technique
The paintings themselves are done in oil paint, the media with which I have worked for most of my 4 years at Clark. Most of the painting have aspects of my background in traditional and a la prima oil painting, mainly in their figurative aspects. It was important to me that the images should stand apart as strongly represented and descriptively painted. The viewer has to be aware of the subject matter of each painting.
My handling of the media, however, has been much different that in past years. I have been much looser in my application of paint and in the style of painting, allowing some brush strokes and paint textures to define forms that I would have otherwise individually described. This is most pronounced in the feathers of the birds, creating an effect of errant, ruffled, or downy feathers.
There is also an increased use of turpentine as media. I credit part of this to having taken a watercolor class this semester, and wanting to translate some of my new knowledge into a realm in which I have more experience. The looseness of the "turped" oil paint allwed me to be free of the exacting specificity in which I often find myself caught. Similarly, it intereacted with tcanvas and other media in novel ways, which I found a use for in the paintings. Specifically, I am referring to two properties of turpentine that were useful. One is the way in which turpentine drips down and through a painting, cutting parts of established paintings with its thinning properties. Combined with the unique visual appearance the dripping takes on were extrememly useful in creating a representation of decay and pollution that is so central to my work.
I also used turpentine to create a suspended environment for pigment, which reacted to drying and modification in a unique way. I covered large areas of the canvas with turpentine, and then introduced pigment that had been similarly diluted. Afterwards, I would hold a lamp above areas of the painting to expedite the drying process. The curious reaction of the turpentine to the heat of the lamp, specifically the ways in which it spread and pooled, became integral to several of my paintings.
I have also begun introducing spray paint to my paintings. This is both function-- to cover large portions of a failed painting or introduce a new scene, as well as aesthetic-- to create blended effects and introduce new planes of texture and color. The unruliness of the spray paint lent itself to the general conflict between textures and styles that has become a signature of my work during the second semester. It also forced me to abandon control of the final painting, allowing the media to be the media, and me to be the facilitator of the painting rather than the fastidious conductor.
The meeting point of my content and technique are environments in which mimetic dead birds are suspended in front of chaotic and chromatically muddy backdrops, often laid over layers of spray paint, drawing, or other paintings. The sense of a definite place is compromised for a more allegorical understanding of location, and the fame of reference is meant to shift within each painting. While my inspiration comes from "cause and effect", the resulting effect in the paintings is meant to be subjective and ambiguous. As I wrote before, dead birds are incredibly loaded images, and it would be foolhardy of me to suggest that the viewer only carry my associations into their viewing. These mixed associations and emotions, I believe, will prove useful in the final showing of the work, allowing the paintings to play off a series of emotions and visual relationships.
The Influences
During the first semester of this project, I read an article about art after the death of the image. The message of the article stuck with me, and I constantly measured my artwork against it, trying to find purpose and meaning in the art I have been making. Specifically, the article said that art as image or record had ended, and that a new era for art had begun. Its up to today's artists to create meaning and value for today's art. My thought was that art should not just be, but rather that it should DO. Art has been a vehicle for the italicization of issues in our culture, and I believe that the purpose of art (or at least my art) is to move further along those lines, acting as a tool of response and conversation to the world around us.
Phil Borges, who is a photographer tied to the Bridges Project furthered my belief that my artwork should tie itself to responsible social issues and provide a visual voice for good works. Borges uses his photography to document indigenous people who are loosing their cultural voices as a result of encroaching development and rapid globalization. It ranges from tribal elders who are the last people to speak their language to portraits of children who have never learned the native tongue of their parents. They are stunning images, but more importantly serve in the hands of a project bigger than the "art world".
Earlier in my artistic development, I came across Robert and Shania Parke Harrison. Their constructed photography ties specifically to issues of human stewardship over the earth, and the complex and tragic relationship that we have r might develop with the environment. These photographs resonated deeply with me, and I knew that they were onto something very important and relevant. Perhaps we met in the right place at the right time-- an intersection of my artistic development, workload, frustrations, and natural questioning of our society. Regardless, they have impacted the direction in which I have developed as an artist.
The artist that set off my entire ideological and artistic pursuit is Alexis Rockman. While I no longer find myself specifically tied to his message and artwork, he warrants mention for starting me in on the idea of environmentalist artwork. His paintings are as much artistic ventures as they are diagrams of a world to-be: Technicolor snapshots of a post apocalyptic earths, worlds after humans are finished, and the results of our decisions making today.
The Conclusion
My images are meant to be immediately available to the viewer. I want the viewer to react to the dead birds first. The are then meant to unfold the issue, considering why these birds are dead. Finally, I want the viewer to find their place within the images. How do they relate to the damage done, and what can we do to solve the crises at hand?
The paintings are as much images as they are a call to action. The italicize the issue. They are meant to ask "what are we doing to solve the problems we have caused, and the problems that lie ahead?" They are not academic postulations, nor are they art historical references. They are saying "Now. Here. This. What are you going to do"?