Painting Commons^™

Exhibiting Forgiveness, John C. Lyden

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a film review of Exhibiting Forgiveness (2024), directed by Titus Kaphar.

Repeat After Me, Bonnie Morano

Theses and Dissertations

Bonnie Morano’s devotional abstract oil paintings are an offering of conviction reconciled with joy. Balancing spiritual zeal with geometric space, she creates mirrored compositions filled with gravitas and play. The sacred and domestic join together in maximal harmony, examining alternative arrangements of transcendental experience.

Affectionate Facsimiles, Julio C. Williams

Theses and Dissertations

The paintings in Affectionate Facsimiles are journeys into the expansiveness of color and memory via the accumulation of gestural action. Sporadic freneticism is used to archive desire and time and their relationship to identity. Thin and translucent layers are built up in bursts of intensity as palimpsests of intentioned labor.

Place-Conscious Vs. Place-Bound, Julie Avetisyan

Theses and Dissertations

Julie Avetisyan’s installation of sculptures, paintings and printmaking works are driven by an exploration of constructed identity that is not place-bound, but place-conscious. In this paper, she explores how her art practice generates world building under the context of the Armenian Diaspora – considering histories of indigeneity, migration, and assimilation.

Jennifer Packer’S Unique Employment Of Color: How The Artist Uses Hue To Mystify And Politicize Simultaneously, Jackson Gifford

Rushton Journal of Undergraduate Humanities Research

Jennifer Packer has immensely impacted the art world since her emergence a decade ago. An African American woman, Packer uses her art to depict, analyze, and complicate the intricacies of living in the United States as a Black person. Packer’s singular style of intimate portraits bordering on the abstract makes her work both intellectually and visually engaging. This essay argues that Packer uses color, through various techniques, to address the socio-political dilemmas she wants to get at in her work. At the same time, she uses these hues in abstraction to lift her paintings away from reality.

Art As Ammunition: The Creative Response To Violence In Ireland, Emma Muchow

Soaring: A Journal of Undergraduate Research

This essay examines the role of murals in Northern Ireland during the Troubles, a period of sectarian violence from 1968 to 1998. It argues that these murals functioned as powerful instruments for both sides of the conflict, serving as a platform to express political ideologies, cultural identities, and lived experiences. The analysis draws upon scholarly works on art and conflict, historical accounts of the Troubles, and examinations of specific murals.

The paper explores the multifaceted role these murals played. It highlights how they served as reflections of the social, political, and cultural tensions of the time. Furthermore, it examines how …

Parodies Of Pleasure: Remedios Varo's Queer Surrealism In Narrative And Painting, Kathryn Everly

Languages, Literatures, and Linguistics - All Scholarship

Remedios Varo (1908-1963) wrote numerous surrealist texts that dialogue with her prolific artistic production. Alchemy, feminism, and psychoanalysis have been studied as central themes in her paintings, yet this paper focuses on humor and parody in Varo’s written works –including her letters, short stories, and dreams– to uncover the seminal ideas and images that emerge in her visual art. Humor and parody are fundamental links between Varo’s narrative and paintings. She embraces the spontaneity of the surrealist écriture automatique and the illogical amor fou but at the same time pushes the limits of surrealist dogma and creates a uniquely nonpatriarchal …

Catherine Nelson, Senior Art Exhibition Portfolio, Macrocosm, Catherine Nelson

Senior Art Portfolios

This is artwork by Catherine Nelson, created for the Spring 2024 Senior Art Exhibition at St. Norbert College.

Value And Form Exploring Wrinkles And Folds In Clothing In Drawing, Jackson Venski

Senior Art Portfolios

Portfolio of Jackson Venski, Senior Art Exhibition 2024.

Reflections Of The Long Light: Poems And Images, Foad Satterfield, Kimberly Satterfield

Faculty Authored Books

Over the course of the last year this project has deepened and expanded in scope. What began as an effort to create a platform to jointly share our creative efforts has shaped itself into an attestation of our lives together. It is a testimony to our individual and shared commitments to our work, to our family and friends, to our communities, and most importantly, to our forty-year relationship with each other—personal and shared spiritual relationship.

Ultimately, this work is an ever-unfolding love story and a reflection of the long light of living and being.

We are seekers committed to a …

Notorious: John Singer Sargent's Madame X, Frankie M. Smith

SPARK Symposium Presentations

The meaning and controversy behind John Singer Sargent's Madame X painting.

From Leonardo To Caravaggio: Affective Darkness, The Franciscan Experience And Its Lombard Origins, Anne H. Muraoka

Art Faculty Publications

The function of affectivity has generally focused on post-Council of Trent paintings, where artists sought a new visual language to address the imperative function of sacred images in the face of Protestant criticism and iconoclasm, either guided by the Council's decree on images, post-Tridentine treatises on sacred art, or by the Counter-Reformation climate of late Cinquecento and early Seicento Italy. This essay redirects the origins of the transformation of the function of chiaroscuro from objective to subjective, from corporeal to spiritual, and from rational to affective to a much earlier period in late Quattrocento and early Cinquecento Milan with Leonardo …

Preventive Conservation Of Easel Paintings For Collectors In China: Navigating Challenges And Exploring Feasible Solutions, Di Lu

MA Theses

This thesis explores the unique challenges faced by art collectors in China, particularly those investing in easel paintings amidst the rapid growth of the Chinese art market. These collectors, often constrained by budget limitations and limited access to high-quality conservation materials and expertise, face significant risks in preserving their cultural assets. The study delves into these specific risks and challenges, aiming to identify feasible strategies for preventive conservation within the Chinese context. Through an extensive review of literature, qualitative interviews with conservators, collectors, and experts, and in-depth case studies, this research offers practical, cost-effective recommendations for alternative materials and methods …

Bridging Cultural Disconnects: Implementing Social And Emotional Learning Through The Use Of Action Research And Community Responsive Pedagogy Through The Art-Making Process, Rajeev Colleen Haymond

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

This thesis project will explore the intentional implementation of social and emotional learning strategies while being grounded in a community responsive pedagogy in an art classroom. The big idea was to be intentional when incorporating social and emotional learning teaching strategies to offer a safe space that will aide in bridging the cultural disconnect that I have observed in the classroom. Through building on the five SEL competencies such as self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills and responsible decision-making students were able to build up their sense of pride and self. Through the use of action research, I was able …

Recollection, Shelby Ann Theis-Lukenbill

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

My work is inspired by life's transient nature and objects' enduring capacity to house memories. The delicate sculptures I create combine second-hand objects with paper to capture the essence of moments and possessions that define personal histories. The objects I use represent more than their form or chemistry; they are imbued with fragments of history and memory that I am driven to preserve. In this work, the sentimental nature and purpose of my belongings hold an equal or greater value than the physical nature and purpose of those belongings. I illuminate an object’s sentimentality by combining its form with painted …

Retrospective Student Projects, Sally Brown, Stewart Plein

Art in the Libraries Retrospective: 2015-2024

This section of the WVU Art in the Libraries Retrospective (2015-2024) includes a summary of student projects.

"Where Did Your Christ Come From?", Kamara V. Townes

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

This written document is the accompanying thesis for my Master of Fine Arts Exhibition, “WHERE DID YOUR CHRIST COME FROM?”, shown at Gallery 937 in downtown Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (displayed April 5th-June 9th, 2024). Through painting, sculpture, and installation, I rely on an intuitive artmaking practice to create work that makes commentary on race, gender and identity. This thesis documents my research on contemporary influences, experimentation with materials and my point of view in conversation with intersectional feminism while navigating institutional racism.

Conceptually the work of my thesis is deeply influenced by womanism and Black culture, which informs my exploration …

At The Table, Payton Olivia Brown

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

This written document is the accompanying thesis for my Master of Fine Arts exhibition, At the Table. This document, as well as my artwork, investigates the profound impact that food has on one’s life by strengthening connections with others, upholding traditions, and cherishing memories. It also elaborates on the inspirations, research, and experimentation utilized in the process of creating the exhibition. Through an array of paintings, mixed media, and sculptural work, this exhibition is intended to depict my own personal experiences and memories in relation to food.

Although I am making autobiographical artwork, I am also trying to portray the …

Interdisciplinary Learning: How Different Ways Of Thinking Can Fuel Passion And Expand Understanding., Allison Amy Peschek

Undergraduate Theses, Professional Papers, and Capstone Artifacts

This Capstone project was created to show the profound experience resulting from an extended range of interdisciplinary learning, and how different methods, when paired together, can enhance a learning experience. This was a personal project of exploration into those different angles, and primarily focused on avenues of logical and creating learning, respectively. These methods have been implemented by this author often in the past, but this capstone will explore this concept further, as there is a lot of potential in combining these different methods and biases in learning, to both further passion and understanding as a learner, but to also …

Joy In The Focus, Focus On The Joy, Alicia Cully

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

This body of work, Joy in the Focus, Focus on the Joy is an engendered unspoken symbolic language generated from the handwritten words of the English language that are defined or viewed with positive connotations. These symbols are meant to spread the feelings each word embodies with what resonates with the priori or memory of the audience. The symbolic language is a key for an individual to make their own connections with how the symbol’s meaning makes them feel,, resulting in an openly welcome invitation to reach a focused joy in connecting with the displayed feeling(s). My drive to create …