Painting Commons^™

Groundswell, Ursula Gullow

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The artist discusses the artwork of her Master of Fine Arts exhibition, Groundswell, held at Tipton Gallery in Johnson City, March 11 – 22, 2024. The exhibition includes wall pieces, sculpture, plaster, and ceramic objects that explore the traditional parameters of painting and its presentation.

Ideas discussed include the philosophy of history, and the origin of European art tropes such as odalisques, flowers, and birds. Framing devices, deconstructed paintings, fiber arts, ceramics, 18^th Century decorative art, plaster, the studio practice, Walter Benjamin, David Lowenthal, Gustave Courbet, Jean Honoré Fragonard, Titus Kaphar, Valerie Hegarty, and maximalism are also surveyed.

In A State Of Becoming, Benjamin Conley

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The artist discusses his Master of Fine Arts exhibition titled, In a State of Becoming. The exhibition was on view at the Tipton Gallery in downtown Johnson City, TN from February 26 March 8, 2024. In a State of Becoming showcased three large scale paintings, five multimedia prints, two sculptural installations, and a video projection installation. Conley's thesis research and current artistic practice revolve around the interfaces, connections, and relationships of humans and animals. Conley explicitly uses language like "animal" to describe "non-human animals" in his work's context. The exhibited works focused primarily on how the artist and/or the viewer …

"‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‎", Stephen Harmon

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

My work tries to perplex the viewer to acknowledge themselves in the act of seeing. In order to perplex them, I use ambiguous reference to figure and space using multiple perspectives, vantage points, gaze, marks, mediums, and, more recently, light and site specificity to establish liminal relationships and experiences. Liminality is a kind of in-betweenness, being on the threshold of places or states of being. My experiences in and studies of the Jewish Diaspora have been my path towards understanding liminality, but liminality is not unique to diaspora or to the Jewish experience and my work does not attempt to …

Home, Work, Land, Gregory Smith

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The artist discusses his Master of Fine Arts exhibition, entitled Family, Work, Land. The exhibit was mounted in Tipton Gallery in downtown Johnson City, TN, from February 22nd to March 11th, 2022. A public reception was held on the evening of March 4th . The exhibition consisted principally of four multimedia installations. Smith’s body of work is an interpretation of how stories that he often heard growing up are related to the Western North Carolina community in which his grandparents were living in the first quarter of the twentieth century. These works explore the interactions between people, how they support …

Dunidedcudigunadie, Lawrence Reid

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The artist discusses his Master of Fine Arts exhibit, titled DUNIDEDCUDIGUNADIE. The exhibit is to be held at the Tipton Gallery in downtown Johnson City, TN, from April 2nd to April 10th, 2020. A live reception will be held the evening of April 3rd, featuring a performance with the work, titled Look at You!

The following thesis explores the artist’s formative years – investigating how childhood experiences combine with artistic and theoretical influences to inform his art-making process.

M0mentary Lapses, Alice Salyer

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The artist discusses her Master of Fine Arts exhibition Momentary Lapses, held at Tipton Gallery, February 25-March 8, 2019. The mixed media works and video examine the intersections between digital, somatic and societal decay through the mediation of the digital image by physical anthropogenic efforts.

Themes in the work include glitch art and theory, entropy, memory, decay, and loss. Contemporary American society’s desensitization associated with the oversaturation of digital imagery is discussed, as well as Guy Debord’s theory of the Spectacle, and the artistic practices of Kurt Schwitters and Robert Rauschenberg.

Matter Under Mind, John F. Lause

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The artist discusses the work for his Masters of Fine Arts exhibition, Mind under Matter, held at the Tipton Gallery in downtown Johnson City, Tennessee. Exhibition dates are from March 27th through April 5th 2017. ‘Matter under Mind’ explores the balance of control and non-control within the art-making process. This technique creates an automatic dialogue resulting in abstraction guided by the subconscious. The title ‘Matter under Mind’ is a slight play on the phrase ‘mind over matter’ emphasizing how matter/material is manipulated by the mind through the making of artwork, and within the mind’s eye or imagination.

The video installation …

Man/Boy., Nick Hartman

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Verisimilitude, or the appearance of being true, is a concept I turn upside down; relating it to a guise I wear as a contemporary male in a society dictated by learned social behavior and gender norms. Cultural iconography and expected gender norms are tropes I confront within my artwork. Drawings of seemingly everyday objects act as meditations or a fetishized repetition of supposed unobtainable objects and ideals that deal with masculine societal norms. Manliness, machismo, masculinity… it is all a culturally learned and expected pose placed on all men. Coming to the realization that I do not necessarily fit …

Dollhouse, Whitney Goller

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The artist discusses the work in DollHouse, her Master of Fine Arts exhibition on display at Tipton Gallery, Johnson City, Tennessee from January 25 to February 5, 2016. The exhibition was an installation consisting of five sets, each containing furniture - both 2D and 3D - and a mask with instructions relating to a room found within a dollhouse.

The sets and supporting thesis explore the ideas of social norms, feminism, and identity, and how submission to ideologies can create emptiness, while engagement can prompt social change. Topics include the process and evolution of the work and the artists who …

Meta-Forms, Rickey P. Bump

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The artist discusses his Master of Fine Arts exhibition, Meta-forms, held at the Tipton Gallery in downtown Johnson City. Exhibition dates are from March 14 through March 25, 2016. The artworks on display are a series of drawings made from carving wood panels and sheet metal and are accompanied with a large scaled site-specific installation. The exhibition culminates from research of historic and contemporary figures for non-objective art. The author gives insight to the artistic process while creating his exhibition, as well as their personal connection with the artwork.

Remembrance: Drink While The Water Is Clean, Marissa Angel

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis paper supports the Artist’s Master of Fine Arts exhibition held at the Tipton Gallery, located in downtown Johnson City TN from November 30, 2015 through January 22, 2016. The works Included in the exhibition consists of a series of mixed media collage paintings, a large scale etching combined with clay and a site specific installation.

The Exhibit features work that delves into the concept of nature as a subject of beauty, as well as a symbol of the resiliency of life. The work in this exhibit exposes the separation that exists between humanity and the natural world. Through …

Flushed, Virgilia K. Ellis

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The artist describes the process and development of the work throughout her graduate career, relating them to the most recent works of her thesis exhibition. Topics discussed include experiences of beauty and themes of transformation. Contextual influences include the Rococo period as well as ideas and theories of Romanticism and the sublime. Histories and theories on representations of the body are also discussed.

The artist discusses her MFA thesis exhibition Flushed, at the Tipton Gallery in Johnson City, Tennessee, from April 13th to April 24th, 2015. Two painting installations, a sculptural installation, and a number of collages are included. Media …