Question of the Year: What is My Concentration

Ha. 

Ok, so I've struggled with this. Still haven't quite nailed it down, but here goes in response to these questions. 

What is the central idea of your concentration?


My concentration focuses in on the unfocused, the blurry, and the obscure, in the hopes of portraying people and our memories of people and ourselves as we see and understand one another: some parts definitive and sharp, others sketchy and unclear. To paint a clear picture of a person, sometimes it takes a fuzzy one. To paint a picture of the present, sometimes it takes a picture of the past. 

How does the work in your concentration demonstrate the exploration of your idea? You may refer to specific images as examples. When referencing specific images, please indicate the image numbers.

This year, I struggled to pin down my concentration. The only commonality between the works I would create was that part of them or all of them would be painted over in frustration. Then, I thought, why not let that become in itself a concentration? From the blurred out images, I found clarity, and sought to represent that mix of blurriness and definition in all my pieces. Combining rough, textural strokes with defined contour lines, smoky layers through which past strokes are still remembered, each portrait had the kind of dimensionality of a real person. The past of each became as important to me as the present state in which they are displayed. I began to use old family photos, attached to the idea of memory, and how it every memory has both blurry and strikingly clear parts to it. In Butts (What AButt It?), I obscured parts of the figures and accentuated others. In the image Mom and Big Baby Brother, drawn from an old family photo, one can see strokes from when I began to work on it, through the three times I gessoed over parts. In Hold On (to the Balloon), I mixed contour lines with gestural ones with smooth paint. The piece Sitting Waiting Wishing (with Laura) is drawn on salvaged wood, with the same idea of salvaging the past, a memory, and making it important, a part of the present. 

Concentration Check Up

Hi! So I wasn't here on Thursday and didn't get any pictures of my latest, sorry! But I'll ramble a bit about where I'm at.

My issue right now is to bring together all the various things I've produced as I've been ridiculous and indecisive to make them into a cohesive body of work. I don't know if you guys can picture them...but the last two I did, of Laura cross-legged in charcoal on wood, and one of a little girl on the giant greyish canvas...are more reflective of the style I'm trying to bring them all together in.

The other day, Mrs. McBride said that what I do is I paint over things...haha whoops...so I thought why not make that what pulls everything together? I have some pieces from Scholastic that are of figures with parts blurred out or painted over, and all together with the last few I've done it's almost as though I haven't been running around like a chicken with its head cut off. I definitely need to add layers and cohesion to all of them, and big time throw a few of them out, but I think I'm going for something along the lines of Obscurity/Emergence, layering on and taking away...in my head it's kinda become parallel to how this year has been, art wise...what comes out of the foggy obscurity in your head, the little moments of clarity in the fuzziness...

PHOENIX.

This is the last big push, and I'm hoping I can make this work and make sense...thank you everyone for putting up with my scatterbrainedness and for taking things away from me before I can ruin them and for all around being wonderful!

 These are three I did before that I want to make work...the first would need that added layer of obscurity...do you think it would work well with it???

And the other two are ones that have a level of obscurity, but I'm not sure how well they go with the ones I've just done...ghweiogweoi I wish I had those to post up buuuuut anyhoo, do you think they could work with them/are they obscure enough? I'm thinking if nothing else, a cohesive color pallet could save the day.