History of Visual Communications
Project 2 – Life Abstract

Artist Statement

This is the first time that I have ever really worked on an abstract piece. There’s always been some sort of structure behind my work. Creating a label, structuring a form, concepting out a pose, or exercises focusing on particular things such as anatomy, shape, or lighting.

Very little of my work has ever been free form, so this piece was actually intimidating for me. How does one go about creating an abstract piece? How can you make art if you don’t know what it is you intend to make in the end? How can you do something without having a thought out process, step by step plans? That’s what my whole life is based around. To-do lists and structure and time tables and end results. How do you let go of all of that and just create?

In a way I feel that I’m not that great of an artist because it’s so hard for me to simply let go and find that creative streak that so many other people seem to have. But I was going to have to figure out some way, some trick, to allow me to do this or fail the assignment.

I was sitting at Crispers, having just eaten, thinking over the requirements for the project and the suggestions given to help jump start the creative process. I was listening to music and simply looking out the window on most people would consider a dreary, rainy day.

I thought about all of the different areas of my life, all of the things that are important to me. All of these different things that add up to make me who I am. All of the colors and feelings and memories I associate with these things.

I took out a mechanical pencil and my sketch book and just started doodling really while I thought of all of these different things. So I suppose these are the swirls of my life. My mom, my brothers, my co-workers, my hobbies, my fears, concerns, hopes, dreams, aspirations, all mixing together.

I used green, blue, red, and purple for the swirls because those are the colors of the charkas I most identify with. The heart chakra, the throat chakra, the root chakra, and the crown chakra. I used blue and purple as the background color because those were the colors I was drawn to. Looking back at it I wish I had gone with a gray or some other solid color so as to let the swirls pop more.

Everything in hindsight I suppose.

This was the first piece where I used color pencil since my art classes for my Computer Animation degree over three years ago. It was fun working with color again. Lately if I do anything traditional I stick to graphite shading, which is still a passion of mine, but this piece is special, in part because of the color.

It was a fun assignment and while it’s not a masterpiece, it was emotionally healing for me and helped me think through some of the issues I have been struggling with, mainly my financial fears and how those fears have been bleeding over into the other areas of my life.

All in all, I’m happy with it, and myself.