Something like research / documentation / studio practice / progress / paying attention. Making a thesis exhibition (+ writing, etc.) happen.
Here’s what I’m thinking:
Tag: painting
end of semester / the stumbling
Part 1, which came second: end of semester / artist statement
In which the art taught me something, like it always does, and that something was a reminder rather than something new. It’s the same lessons – love, be not afraid, trust, stay – over and over again for this self who is by grace becoming a tiny bit more well-integrated.
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And here’s part 2, which came first.
“I’m stumbling in pursuit of grace.”
Sarah Kay
Interpreting Details (series, fall 2014)
This semester, I’ve explored abstract interpretations of some of my favorite details from classical paintings I was able to see this summer. Using my own photo references, I am finding abstract compositions within these classical works and paying homage to the brilliant and energetic brushwork, textures, color relationships, value patterns, etc. found in a small portion of the original painting. I’m interested in the relationship contemporary artists (and non-artists) have to historical work, the unique phenomena of experiencing a painting in person, the different responses to similar compositions in a representational vs. non-representational abstraction context. I don’t think we can avoid the long heritage of artists who have come before us or the traditions that art history has given us. So how do we make original work – our work – in light of this? Even though these started as references to what I’ve seen, they emerged as pieces that very much reflect my hand, aesthetic sensibilities, and creative process in responding to a painting that is mine and in front of me.
grateful today
- for Marathon Family / Weekend and the way this feels like home
- for seven of my favorite people coming to hang out + work + have great conversations at the studio late last night: communion
- for the ability to make the things I need to be making; feeling creativity as a way of being instead of as an output function
- for the simplicity of sleeping in and coffee meetings and Grace
Remembering Rome and the Origin of Beauty
Remember that one time we almost didn’t see the Sistine Chapel? (It’s a fun story.)
“That one time” happened less than three days ago and now I’m up at 7:30am-feels-like-1:30pm, 20 hours of travel removed from Rome and it kind of doesn’t feel real.
But, it was. And it was so worth it because the Sistine Chapel was perhaps the most overwhelmingly beautiful thing I have ever observed. The paintings – oh! yes, the paintings; but also the deep commitment among the men who took it from idea to reality, and the weight of the fact that I know this God whose story is laid out so beautifully before the eyes of thousands of people every day. I know this God and he’s infinitely more beautiful than even the grandest examples of human creation. He’s the origin. I, a self-supposed lover of Beauty, forget that far too often.
Standing, eyes upward, in the chapel with these things in my head, it was all I could do not to weep for the sheer too-big-for-words beauty of it all. In the end, sure, it would have been sad to visit Rome and miss the Sistine Chapel, but it’s heartbreaking to consider a life without any acknowledgement of ultimate Beauty.
(Psalm 27:4)
One thing I have asked of the Lord,
that will I seek after:
that I may dwell in the house of the Lord
all the days of my life,
to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord
and to inquire in his temple.
Amen.
Photo: Getty Images via The Huffington Post
