Painting Commons^™

A Studio Manifesto, Macy West Zimmer

Honors Capstones

No abstract provided.

Création Artistique Et « Folie », Elsa Ghossoub

Dirassat

Madness and artistic creativity have always been related to each other. Both Plato and Aristotle dwelt on this issue. This relation has been demonstrated in the case of many poets, thinkers and philosophers. Most of the outstanding artists suffered from some sort of psychic trouble and melancholy. This article analyses the paintings of renowned painters who were either mad or trying to represent madness in their work of art to exteriorize discomfort. Thus madness has become in the field of art a refuge for Man to let go.

Study Of Native Colombian Tribes: Art As A Means Of Inspiration, Sofia Fernandez

Honors Program: Senior Projects (Public)

Study of Native Colombian Tribes: Art as a Means of Inspiration, examines Latin American art, particularly Indigenous Colombian art as a source of inspiration for the creation of a series of artworks. This project considers two Colombian tribes: Wayuu and Okaina. It emphasizes these tribes’ ancestry, history, purpose, and traditions, with the objective of giving them a voice in a community where they are underrepresented and unknown. This thesis provides a critical look into the tribe’s traditions and artistic techniques through the creation of a variety paintings, drawings, and prints. This body of work concentrates on textiles and patterns from …

Things Change, Julia Leggent

School of Art, Art History, and Design: Theses and Student Creative Work

The paintings in Things Change are pieces of my life; they follow my routines, thoughts, and worries, but these topics are experienced by many. The images of flesh, knobs, and pills are painted at life scale and are meant to be widely relatable. With each of my works, I hope to bring awareness to social, political, and feminine themes while drawing the viewer in and inciting interest in the ever-changing visual aspects of everyday life.

Examining routine, ritual, and time is always fascinating to me; I work to show this through my paintings. Practices change throughout the years. Strangely, you …

Death And The Transformation Of Women’S Roles Surrounding Death: An Analysis Of Jacques-Louis David’S History Paintings, Miranda Boljat

Bound Away: The Liberty Journal of History

Jacques-Louis David is remembered today for his contributions to the world of Neoclassical art before the French Revolution, during the Revolution, and during the reign of Napoleon Bonaparte. His body of work represents an impressive journey from his Rococo roots to his Neoclassical political works to his many different portraits of Napoleon. In comparing his pieces, an observer can track the development of a variety of themes. Specifically, it is possible to see the different ways David portrayed the event of death in his history paintings. From there, a researcher can clearly tie the different views of death to the …

Creating A New Normal Through Engagement In Meaningful Occupation, Jennifer K. Fortuna Phd, Otr/L

The Open Journal of Occupational Therapy

Katie Edick, an occupational therapist and artist based in Portland, Michigan, provided the cover art for the Winter 2021 edition of The Open Journal of Occupational Therapy (OJOT). “Katie Bird” is a 4” x 6” watercolor painting. After receiving a diagnosis of metastatic breast cancer (MBC), Katie set out to find a new purpose and leave a legacy. She made the decision to live with intention and choose life experiences that create joy. Through engagement in meaningful occupations, such as painting and patient advocacy, Katie is creating a new normal.

Color Compliments, Jennifer Hansen Rolli

The Transdisciplinary STEAM+ Journal

A discussion of the range of use of complimentary colors

Ivan Puni's Berlin Period: 1920-1924, Elena Kakuriev

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is dedicated to the work of the Russian Avant-Garde artist Ivan Albertovich Puni (1892-1956): an artist, a theorist and writer, an organizer of exhibition, a teacher of art, and above all, an innovator. This thesis presents an account of the artist's Berlin period (1920-1924), which has so far lacked scholarly attention.

The thesis begins with a close analysis of Puni's Russian period (1914-1919). In this time span,

Ivan Puni demonstrated his ability to adopt a wide gamut of diverse artistic styles. Puni first elaborated works akin to Cubist constructions. However, starting from 1915, the artist became a major …

Membranes And Frames, Nurya Chana

Theses and Dissertations

Nurya Chana (b.1988, Bronx, NY) paints, sculpts, and performs to grapple with discontinuities between self and other, the inner and outer self, physicality and feeling. Her practice aims to expose the non-mental voices of the body, reconciling life sciences with the complexity, enormity, and potency of livingness.

From Here And Now: Monuments Of Today And Everyday, Adam Shaw

Theses and Dissertations

The arc of my educational narrative was drawing to a close. I was a month out from my thesis exhibition, the culmination of a three-year experience. The studio was full of an energy I had been longing to feel. I was just beginning. Then came the Pause.

Bernice Lee Bing’S Art And Spiritual Practice, Lin Ma

Theses and Dissertations

Living and working in northern California between the late 1950s and 1990s, abstract painter Bernice Lee Bing practiced Zen, Nichiren, and Nyingma Buddhism. This thesis studies what the visual and conceptual impact of these spiritual practices had on her abstract and visionary paintings.

Performing A List … From A To Z And Back Again, Michael O'Hara, Catherine O'Carroll, Connell Vaughan, Jeanette Doyle

Books

AC Books is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) art think tank fostering experimentation and critical discussions through events, exhibitions, and publishing.

Images by Jeanette Doyle.

For Consumption: Observations Of Paint, Food, & Culture, Annette Tojar

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

This thesis is a visual documentation of my story. In it, I discuss the urgency which drives the creation of my work. Unable to speak the same language, my grandmother and I used food and paint as means of communication, thus instilling my love of food, my desire to paint, and my need to investigate my Cuban culture. As a former professional pastry chef, my understanding of the physicality of food informs how it is portrayed on a two-dimensional surface for visual indulgence. I explore loss, objectification, transculturation, and the pandemic through images of food, while experimenting with the properties …

Why Be A Great Women Artist When You Could Be Spectacular: The Study Of Women Old Masters In The Art History Canon Through Art Market Bias, Zoë Mahler

MA Theses

It has been 50 years since the publication of Linda Nochlin’s renowned 1971
/="/">essay, “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?” On the 50th anniversary, the question remains the same. Questioning the woman artist’s place in the art world has become nuanced, and the restraints women experienced, as highlighted by Nochlin, still have validity today. By exploring the last 20 years of the art market and the perception of the woman’s place in the art world, it is clear progress has been made in certain respects, especially regarding Women Old Masters. The canon of art history and the …

Jazz Colors: Pigment Identification In The Gouaches Used By Henri Matisse, Ana Martins, Anne Catherine Prud’Hom, Maroussia Duranton, Abed Haddad, Celine Daher, Anne Genachte-Le Bail, Tiffany Tang

Publications and Research

Jazz, the illustrated book by Henri Matisse, is a testament to the vitality of the artist in the last decade of his career. The book consists of twenty illustrations reproduced in 370 copies using a stencil-based printing technique and the same Linel gouaches the artist had used for the original maquettes. This study reports on the comprehensive analysis carried out to identify the pigments in the gouaches used in Jazz by transmitted and reflectance infrared, Raman, SERS, and X-ray fluorescence spectroscopies, and describes the lightfastness of these gouaches as evaluated by microfaedometry. This study also highlights the necessity of …

An Escapist Utopia, Sara Eh Denney

Theses and Dissertations

As an active pursuit of avoiding excellence, my work acts as a space for failure, play, experimentation and imperfection. This document and final installation acts as a pause along a lifelong journey of object-making, creation, and spirituality. My work, specifically my working practice, rather than any one object or moment, is an escapist utopia for myself. My work is the process, the journey, not the ending or the completion of any one thing. The repetition, distortion, and production that I engage throughout my working practice acts as a spiritual exercise of meaning—making through creation. I fall deeply in love with …

Straight Through My Heart, Raul A. Aguilar Canela

Theses and Dissertations

Straight through my heart is an exhibition that explores the concept of heartbreak as a socio-political phenomenon. Through the affect of sadness the thesis analyses the way in which subjects are formed under cognitive capitalism. Paying particular interest to the collateral effects of neoliberal culture —hyper-stimulation, self-exploitation, competition, and obsession with productivity—and the pathologies they create —depression, anxiety, body aches, fatigue— this work shifts the burden of sadness from the individual to the community. By doing so it proposes heartbreak as a public feeling.

Novaturient, Robert Tyler Willmore

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

John Muir famously said, "The mountains are calling and I must go." The yearning ache to visit and connect with natural wild landscapes is real. Through brush and pigment, I attempt to capture the mystery and wonder of wild landscapes that have inspired me to be a novaturient soul. The power of landscape is generally symbolic yet uniquely concrete. Exploring the balancing conflicts of nature has led me to comprehend the universe and my place in it.

By mimicking the naturalist who breaks down wild spaces into macro-focused observations, I translate my experience with landscape into relationships of line, shape, …

Mythology Of Uncertainty, Connor Johanson

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

I think of my work as a mythology under constant revision that reevaluates our human perceptions of the natural world. The root of mythology comes to us from ancient Greek mythos. The original meaning of mythos was simply an account from memory–your mythos could be what your day was like, what happened and how you felt. We are all in the continuous process of building narratives of our individual lives, our cultures, and the world around us.

Human stories and values–mythos–underlie metaphors and analogies, meaning that no discussion of scientific ideas can be free of cultural bias. Discussion of symbiotic …

Unlocking The Energy Within; A Journey Through Healing And Evolution, Juliana Favela

Scripps Senior Theses

Through a series of acrylic paintings and watercolors, I set out to document emotions, feelings, and experiences that I’ve had through my personal process of healing. By engaging in meditations for each piece, I was able to decide on a set of motifs, symbols, colors, and messages that I wanted to portray. This paper discusses in more detail how I went about this process and what the significance of each piece is, in addition to my inspiration, my identity and its impacts on the work, as well as what I learned from this process. I argue that as we unravel …

Combat Artist, Delvin Goode

Master's Theses or Doctor of Nursing Practice

The integral bond that unites the American citizen with the selfless men and women of the Armed Forces will be strengthened through my juxtaposition of uncommonly complementary crafts. “Combat Artist”, featuring high-quality ceramic mugs, unique packaging, pristine painted panels, and kindred graphics will bridge a gap that enhances relationships between these two worlds through a shared love of country and shared culture. The resultant works create fantastic windows into my military life communicating messages full of humor, patriotism, and love. I aspire to masterfully unite ceramic techniques with proven principles of design distributed across all mediums within my work, culminating …

Head Heart Hand Human, Michelle Kathryn Postma

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

My art is emblematic of the practice of accepting reality. The vehicles I use to do this are a cast of characters, materials and compositional strategies that in totality, remind the viewer and myself to be in the moment.

The thesis exhibition, Heart Vomit and the Dream Army, featured mural-esque ink paintings on panels and approximately 36 - 48 inch high abstract ceramic figures covered with images. Both the 2D and 3D works feature a cast of characters. These characters originate from “Michelle Land”, an imaginary world created to house an evolving symbolic visual language. The graphic black and white …

Behind The Plexi, Janina E. Martinez-Fields

Theses and Dissertations

I am a realistic figurative painter focusing on culture, family, friends and identity. Throughout my life I have found little representation for artists who are women and less for women of color, and emphasized this topic through my art. I incorporated the struggles experienced through this past year's pandemic as an added layer of obstacles for women in the creative industry. I combined two surfaces; wood to represent life and plexiglass to represent how we have protected ourselves through separation. I use vibrant acrylic colors on both the wood and plexiglass layers to represent the moods, professions and activities of …

Reclaim, Harris Benjamin Deno

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

I make ceramic and mixed media objects that embody interaction with material. Translated from the simple utterance of the hand the material articulates the labor. As in any relationship there are miscommunications and disagreements; Desperation, struggle, and honest interaction are apparent on the surface of the labored forms. Objects are created in an immediate fashion, the intimacy of the moment folded into the material. Each interaction an embodiment of the human experience. I think of these works as entries in a journal; The gravity of a moment is captured, relieving the mind by bearing that weight.

Whenever approaching a work, …

Luminous Threshold, Peggy Wen

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Luminous Threshold is an interactive experience exploring the liminal transition between the viewer and ambiguous spaces. My thesis exhibition incorporates two paintings, one continuous pulsing light structure, two sound-activated light structures, and a black cube that is perceived to be inserted through the gallery wall. The paintings and forms explore liminality within a two-dimensional space, while the light pieces create an ephemeral viewer- participation experience. Liminality, defined by Arnold Van Gennep and Victor Turner, is one of three stages in life an individual will go through. It is considered a Rite of Passage or Threshold and is the ambiguous transitional …

Enduring Covid-19 As Nyc Subway Riders, Ruben Cuevas

Theses and Dissertations

My thesis paper describes my master art project of paintings about the New York City Subway riders commuting routine prior and during the Coronavirus. As a regular subway rider myself I am closely connected with this particular art project because I witnessed the subway riders endure the most contagious viral pandemic of the 21st century. My thesis recounts how from a few sketches and photo shots of people in the subway this art project developed into a collection of paintings carefully completed on large linen canvas and acrylic medium. The initial set of my paintings narrate typical NYC subway rider …

Unlocking The Energy Within; A Journey Through Healing And Evolution, Juliana Favela

CMC Senior Theses

Through a series of acrylic paintings and watercolors, I set out to document emotions, feelings, and experiences that I’ve had through my personal process of healing. By engaging in meditations for each piece, I was able to decide on a set of motifs, symbols, colors, and messages that I wanted to portray. This paper discusses in more detail how I went about this process and what the significance of each piece is, in addition to my inspiration, my identity and its impacts on the work, as well as what I learned from this process. I argue that as we unravel …

Foreigner, Cancan Huang

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

This written thesis serves as supporting documentation for Foreigner, my MFA Thesis Exhibition. This exhibition reflects my experience as a foreigner, a solitary Chinese man living in the United States. Through embodying my personal experience, my paintings question the relationship between individuals and society.

The exhibition is composed of a series of paintings that visualize my personal story as a foreigner living in an incompatible and unacquainted culture. By displaying imagery of myself and my family in frozen moments, the paintings draw viewers into a discussion about personal identity, life philosophy, and culture collision. The exhibition and this thesis expand …

Difficult Paintings, Hao (Damien) Ding

Theses and Dissertations

The sublime as a concept has a fraught and racist history. However, it remains the single most helpful idea in describing the deeply felt state of being when one comes across something ineffably powerful. From an art-making perspective, this thesis, and the accompanying exhibition of installations and paintings, proposes an alternative construction of the concept of the sublime. Using Lacanian psychoanalysis as a conceptual point of departure, a painter can manipulate the relationship of the viewer and paintings to create paradoxical moments of simultaneous intimacy and distance, which interact to create an alternative path towards the sublime. Through descriptions of …

Evolution Of Island, Dominique Kongsli

The Transdisciplinary STEAM+ Journal

Evolution of Island emerged from the depths of an ocean of blue paint. My process involves observation of nature: I remember scuba diving in Thailand in the Andaman Sea and having a spiritual experience underwater while observing Christmas-tree worms pop in and out of the coral.