Painting Commons^™

Surface, Object, Space, Susan Doe

Masters Theses

Considered primarily a form of painting, my practice adopts the languages of sculpture and installation to explore abstract constructions of personal and societal hierarchies. In this current body of work, I am crocheting architectural forms that blur the distinctions between surface, object, and space. Whether occupying pictorial space or actual space, simple patterned units coalesce into emergent forms through repetition and accumulation. I am drawn to malleable materials that allow for an indexical registration of the force of my hands and body. Working in a wide range of materials including paper, mylar, fabric, foam, plastic, sheet metal, wire, monofilament, and …

A Theatrical Life : Negotiating Biracial Identity, Timothy Lai

Masters Theses

My paintings and drawings use autobiography, fiction, and theatricality to examine biracial-identity formation and the negotiation of different cultural ideologies. The personification of these ideologies in narrative accounts pose questions to which the characters must answer and respond. This leads to humorous, sad, problematic, empowering, and chaotic compositions that become an intimate chronicle of my own endeavor to find those “perfect” answers.

In my practice, painting and drawing are ways to explore a broad range of topics that stem from personal and familial stories. Using allegorical personifications, symbols, and metaphors derived from my family, I see the home as a …

Anthro/Post/Cene, Sofia Ortiz

Masters Theses

My project proposes a ‘deep-time’ lens, both in geological as well as cellular terms, as a strategy for dealing with an anxious contemporary world. By practicing the contextualizing of self within a multiplicity of worlds, one is able to be humbled, empathetic and (hopefully) conscientious. My work develops across multiple mediums, and seeks out different paths for creating immersive experiences that both highlight and promote interconnectivity. I endeavor to find dynamic systems that can accommodate multiple subjectivities, ideally fostering consensual indeterminacy between the work and its participants. With this in mind, my work unfolds as series of reconfigurable fragments, where …

From Florine To Flocking : Observations Of A Painter - Printmaker - Embellisher, Elizabeth King

Masters Theses

I am a painter-printmaker-embellisher. The hierarchy of these labels shift to best suit the needs of each piece. Making an image that encourages looking takes precedent over how it is labeled. A quickly read painting is the enemy. I weave together complex passages on the surface to function as a speed bump, to slow down the viewer’s navigation of my paintings. I value color, pattern, and texture above a narrative. Borrowing the palette of Florine Stettheimer and the repetitive touch of Edouard Vuillard, my paintings teeter dangerously between being about the idea of decoration and being decorative. Domesticity, femininity, and …

The Little Girl (Kinda), Hanna Kim

Masters Theses

My work has always been about the personal relationships I've had in the past. It is driven by the

nostalgia of what was, and how it came to be within the present. It is not the act of languishing in a better time or the need to replay a scenario from when life was thought to have been easier. It is replaying the past that makes me chuckle, even if at the time the said event was not so hilarious or amusing. While I am heavily influenced by the psychological workings of the human mind and sociology, I ultimately decided …

The Shrine System: Votive Culture And Cult Sculpture, Enshrining Space In 11th To 13th Century France, Kristen N. Racaniello

Theses and Dissertations

Possible relationships between northern and southern French shrines are examined in this paper through case studies of the shrines at Chartres and Conques. The materiality of cult statues and votive objects, the body as performative tool, and institutional motivations are considered for their bearing on the shrine as a system.

The Past Is Today, Afra Al Dhaheri

Masters Theses

Process is a vital element to construction and deconstruction. Yet, materiality serves as a vehicle to expose the aesthetics developed by the process. However, without memories, the construction of these bodies of work would have never been conceived. Rapid change was the initial experience that formed memories in the first place, it was inevitable. Hence, an adaptation method had to be examined. The trees had proven to be worthy of the investigation. The trees required materials and the materials demanded a process. Process developed the work and the work had to have context. Context evolved from memory and required more …

Humor And Allegory, Christopher Goodale

Masters Theses

This series of works proposes the merging of aesthetic interests that undermine the self-seriousness of the artist and the idea of labor in painting. Painting’s slowing of time can hopefully extinguish the peripheral noise of the outside world and provide space for thought. These paintings propose different ways to help the viewer understand visual depth, narrative, and formal decision-making. The optical depth of red, the spatial depth of glazed paint, and the spiritual depth of the figure can provide multiple meanings and possibilities. Another metaphor for the development of this series of paintings would be one comedian telling a joke …

The Farce Of The Frame, Dominic Musa

Masters Theses

Both argument and joke, this series of works offers a critical inspection of the world. Characters trace their steps through the scene of each painting, questioning their place within the appearance of things. The central character is the artist-as-critic. Through this character, with his looming magnifying lens, we are implicated as readers of the faux world—an absurdist play intoxicated with scribbled lines, decorative patterns, and conflated histories—as we embark on a quest for an understanding of human existence. Emptied of any emotional concerns, the characters investigate the world they live in, searching for any indication of hope or a reason …

Catherine Cajandig Interview, Rebecca Murphy

Asian American Art Oral History Project

Bio:

Catherine Cajandig is a painter, printmaker, muralist and curator. At an early age, she showed an interest in art that was encouraged by her parents and teachers. She attended classes in the SAIC Junior School. In 1960, she was juried into The Chicago Society of Artists and has remained an active member. She has served as a board member that included various committees and was the President for one year. She is the committee chairwoman that publishes the yearly CSA Print and Drawing Calendar.

Her images are of personal topics and observations, developed through series and recurring themes. She …

Get Me Out Of Here, Wendy F. Liszt

Theses and Dissertations

My thesis paper Get Me Out of Here discusses paintings I made and presented while preparing to finish the Hunter MFA program in spring 2017.

Between Rock And Breeze, Lena Schmid

Theses and Dissertations

My thesis project consists of a series of works on paper and songs about the collusion of the body and nature. I use a lens that both distorts and makes clearer the ineffable ways our bodies shake their boundaries, moving without us and within us.

Welcome To My Dream – Quasi Queer Fiction, Christian A. Rogers

Theses and Dissertations

Roseate and bodacious, the hand formed surfaces of Christian Rogers' paintings explore gay culture and history though a quasi-fictional lens. While utilizing folk like imagery, Christian depicts dramatic moments of love, lust, sex and violence as he takes us to queer realms.

Light And Space, Lindsay M. Burke

Theses and Dissertations

I make visceral images that are simultaneously elusive and confrontational. They are in dialogue with the historical tradition of figurative painting and drawing, but also aim to subvert those conventions. I want to catch and retain, as long as possible, the attention of my viewer by creating a familiar space that is slowly undermined. In my works the human body is dispersed in space; plants and tree parts are stand-ins for human desires, and gender is assigned to fragments of the body and to objects, then withdrawn.

My City Limits, Maggie Tarr

Graduate School of Art Theses

Many have taken part in the act of flanerie,[1] however, many have fallen victim to the flaneur; “the flaneur is the man who indulges in flanerie…”[2]. I am perpetually followed by the male gaze. I am a flaneuse, a surveyor of my surroundings at all times. “Outsider/insider is a border the flaneuse must skirmish on constantly, if only with herself.”[3]

This thesis is a first hand account of my negative experiences that are generated by the many flaneurs of sexualized culture and lustful society. It is an analysis of the paintings I have created as …

Ripple, Tyler P. Haney

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

My work leverages the dynamic processes the brain uses to compute visual stimuli to influence how viewers experience my work. My aim is to create a ripple effect as the brain processes the visual information I provide.

My process begins with a camera. Focusing on the face, I see how much contextual information I can remove while still capturing the emotional expression of the subject. Before long, a photograph ends up next to a canvas where I will rebuild the image from the photograph using a myriad of expressionistic marks and colors to amplify the emotion.

Recognizing human emotion is …

Beginner's Mind, Martin L. Benson

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

My art distills my relationship to spirituality, digital culture, and the practices and side-effects therein, into a simplified visual language. The work manifests in the form of paintings, drawings, and light sculptures. Meditation and mindfulness training are a large part of my influence and interests. I often wonder how mindfulness practice can be mirrored in my artwork, not only in my process for creating the work, but also with what the resulting imagery does for the viewer. My intention is to provide an art form that invites one to look and experience one’s own capacity to observe, without the need …

Untitled, Amanda Olson

Studio One

No abstract provided.

Laura Myntti 2017, Laura J. Myntti

CGU MFA Theses

This work is about the actual making of a painting, not subject matter. It's about use of materials as a means and a sense of space to a dynamic end.

Freed From Fascism: Berlin's Gallery Culture In The Aftermath Of World War Ii, Brooke Fessler

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

In post-World War II Germany, the city of Berlin was left in ruin after six years of war. A nation ripped apart both physically and at its governmental core was finally freed from Nazi fascism in 1945, and the German people were finally able to reconstruct their culture. Born out of years of strict regulation of the German art world, a new type of art was put on display. Focusing specifically on gallery culture in Berlin in the post-war years, one can see how twelve years of classically influenced Nazi art gave way to a push towards the avant-garde. The …