Art Practice Commons^™

Polaroid Access, Becky Jane Rosen

Theses and Dissertations

In her thesis statement, Becky Jane Rosen discusses the relationships between photography, family, and the psyche through her recent paintings and artistic influences.

Raw, Jian Liang

CGU MFA Theses

My work is an exploration of the body in obscurity. The understanding of my own cultural identity, gender, and sexuality lead up to the work in this show. The work is a metaphor for the complex identity that I experience, and a discovery of the queer, marginal space that I am in as a person, as a painter, as an artist.

The term “raw” refers not only to the sensuous bodies depicted in my work, but also the body of the physical material. The paintings question the intimate relationship between bodies, and the bodies’ internal as well as external spaces. …

The Adjacent, Phoebe Jan-Mcmahon

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

There are few times when my mind quiets; painting is one of them. A universe exists adjacent to this one where I process thoughts in a quiet space, free from the streaming cacophony of various devices. This adjacent space is where my mind is able to process the state of the world. I think it is essential that everyone knows what is going on around them, especially if the issues they hear about do not affect their daily life. I want to be an active participant in the world but find myself bogged down by the unrelenting events cycling through …

Zooairyland- Xinjie Yin Mfa Thesis Show, Xinjie Yin

CGU MFA Theses

During the process of discovering myself in my art world, I have determined to use cuteness as a way to express my worldview, values, and experiences. Cuteness is my own philosophy and language in the interpersonal communication. I intend to make cuteness meaningful to me as well as to the rest of the world. I believe cuteness contains a power to bring people back to their original simplicity regardless of their age, it is the idea of innocence. Cuteness is like a shield for me to protect myself from the tough, scary and crazy reality; and it is a positive …

In Visible Grounds, Jennifer Simms

CGU MFA Theses

Jenni Simms - In Visible Grounds - Show Description

I am interested in finding ways to make visual art that positions the viewer between advocation and negation, or possession and estrangement with the natural world and human presence. As an artist I am most satisfied when I can include all of these ideas together: a sense of time, edges of some kind, a sense of mystery alongside just enough of the known and signs of human presence and the natural world.

For In Visible Grounds I began my focus with color, or the visible light spectrum.is includes all of the …

Drawings With River, Greg Piwonka

Theses and Dissertations

These paintings are a record of my recent past, a past with a new son, major life shifts, big decisions and risks. These paintings are a record of my distant past, of my relationship with my father and siblings. These paintings are a record of my present, my relationship to art, current, past, good and bad. These paintings are both joyful and cathartic, simple and confusing. They are about my life, and my attempt to not repeat the mistakes of the past, but to try create joys for the future.

After The Big Wind Stops I See Gentle Waves, Eunji (Jubee) Lee

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis covers my reflections on the inspirations and the motivations behind selected works including my candidacy exhibition; Resonance and my thesis exhibition; after the big wind stops I see gentle waves. It contains my life throughout my MFA studies and the development of my art practice. Through its story-within-a-story method of narration and my describing streams of my thoughts, I am attempting to explain the processes of my development and the discoveries I have made, the little things in my daily life, and the big turning points that inspired me. My work and this document have been strongly determined …

Julia Margaret Cameron's Photographs As Paintings, Winnie Wu

Calvert Undergraduate Research Awards

This paper argues that in order to better understand the photographic techniques, and compositional choices employed by Julia Margaret Cameron, one must analyze them in terms of the language of paintings. By using photography to stage painterly tableaus, Cameron blurred reality and fiction, the result of which is the equalization of all those she photographed, be they famed Victorian poets or female maids.

Quotations Like The Sharpest Claws, Johanna Robinson

Theses and Dissertations

Quotations like the Sharpest Claws describes a multimedia installation composed of paintings and sound that explores the theory of cognitive dissonance, a controversial psychological model that attempts to explain how we deal with inconsistency in incompatible beliefs. Imagination is given primacy as a source for truth-seeking and world-building. The uncanny and surreal are used as entry points into this topic.

The title is derived from a description of Eileen Myles’ poetry I once read in an anonymous review. Their writing was described as beyond poetry in a way that it could only be described as such when surrounded by “quotations …

Ordinary Disorder, Jonathan S. Tracy

Theses and Dissertations

The pictorial spaces in my paintings are found through many drawings, based on memories. In these drawings I use the architectural technique of paraline drawing, in pointed contrast to one or two point perspective. With a fixed point of view unavailable, the viewer or reader becomes the writer too. This is what I intend. The paraline method also engages specific corners of art history to which I relate, including woodblock prints of Japanese interiors, Chinese brush painting landscapes with houses, and the shifting, rotating perspectives found in Baroque painting. My intensely personal memories/drawings are transfused into highly material finished paintings. …

Combining An Intuitive Art Workshop And Neuroscience Rituals To Make Us Happy, Audrey Gran Weinberg

The Transdisciplinary STEAM+ Journal

One might wonder how intuitive art can connect to neuroscience and how this could be accomplished. In this descriptive article, research connecting art therapy and neuroscience has been collected and a workshop on Intuitive Painting has been described in detail. The connection was made by the author based on an article by Barker (2017), ‘4 Rituals to be more Happy,’ who writes a popular science blog. The rituals: gratefulness, expressing negative emotions, decision making and human touch were combined with Dr. Pinkie Feinstein’s method of Intuitive Painting in a small group setting. Although subjective, it would seem that at least …

Invisible Invisibility, Eugina Song

Theses and Dissertations

White America assumes its culture is the default, and Asian culture as foreign and irrelevant. I address Asian invisibility by using canvas structure as a Western framing device of painting, and make this cultural barrier visible by breaking out of the frame. Deriving from Dansaekhwa, I challenge the Western painting structure with materiality.

Pockets Of Proximity, Christian Breed

Theses and Dissertations

My current paintings begin with images of people from the back, wearing hijabs, turbans, saris, kufis, or rasta gauzy shawls. I do not paint my subjects frontally, because I do not have access to them personally or culturally, and because it is their cultural indicators that fascinate me.

Everything I Thought I Was Supposed To Do, Jeff Conefry

Theses and Dissertations

It is within the liminal space between traditional mediums that my creative practice deconstructs the materiality of painting to subvert historical expectations. The irony associated with this deconstruction, excavates one medium to generate the building blocks for something inimitable. These blocks are most easily re-categorized into Words, Limits, and Power. It is these three themes that are the foundation of my thesis exhibition.

"Some Kinda Alchemy", Chelsea Boxwell

CGU MFA Theses

Multiple pieces and paintings come together in “Some kinda Alchemy” to create one large-scale painting environment that increases your interaction and perception of two- dimensional painting. The sculptural aspect is solely a means to an end, to allow the viewer to see more. I want everyone to see as much as possible- as much of the physical painting as possible and as much of the process and actions as possible. There’s more than just a front and 4 sides to my paintings. This structure also inhabits the space the way it does in order to direct you all the way …

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.

No-Self, Impermanence And The Search For Freedom, Ahna Serendren

Theses and Dissertations

Ahna Serendren’s MFA thesis draws upon the Buddhist principles of anatta (no-self), anicca (impermanence), and nibbana (liberation), using them as a framework through which to explore her own artwork and the work of other historical and contemporary artists.

Perspective, Karie D. Cooper

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

As an artist, I am interested in understanding how and why humans interact with the natural world. I examine my own individual behaviors and practices and research impacts made on nature by humans as a whole. I am drawn to nature for a multitude of reasons, including aesthetic beauty, psychological wellness, unraveling the mysteries of the universe and trying to understand the origins of life. As an artist I explore the dialectic relationship between everything we perceive outside of ourselves as the environment, and the way we think of ourselves in relation to that environment. I believe in the interconnectedness …

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 …

Tony Larson: 2017 Mfa Thesis Exhibition, Tony Larson

CGU MFA Theses

I am interested in altering the modes of communication to which I am subjugated. I am open to participating fully in the world around me, especially in the arms of technology. With every new media channel directed at changing consumer behavior and every new gadget at its dedicated servitude, there are new cracks and chasms to inhabit. These spaces are where new propositions are made. I discover and expand these empty spaces by sticking to a regimented set of processes and self imposed limitations to the way I approach painting. My work proposes that the space of art is uniquely …

Remembering Virtual Worlds: Painting And Video Games, Nathaniel M. St. Amour

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

Video games create the feeling of great achievement and place the player into a role that turns them into a great hero. These experiences feel significant because they require great time and emotional investment. The monumentality of these experiences, however, are at odds with the transience of the electrical virtual worlds. The medium of oil painting helps overcome the sense of transience because of oil painting’s durable permanent way of image making and stillness. Painting’s inherent nod to history also creates a dissonance between the newness of the video game medium and the antiquity of painting, a contrast exacerbated by …

Kaveri Raina Interview, Eva Swiecki

Asian American Art Oral History Project

Kaveri Raina is an artist working in Chicago, IL. She was born and raised in New Delhi, India and moved to the States at the age of eleven. In 2011 she received her BFA in Painting and Photography from the Maryland Institute College of Art, and in 2016 her MFA in Painting and Drawing from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Raina was a 2016 recipient of the James Nelson Raymond Fellowship, Fred and Joanna Lazarus Scholarship, amongst others. In fall 2016 she completed a five-week residency at Ox-Bow, in Saugatuck, MI. Raina has exhibited in Chicago, New …

Jun-Jun Sta.Ana Interview, Jackson Hughlett

Asian American Art Oral History Project

Bio: Jun-Jun Sta.Ana is a self-taught multi-disciplinary artist born on September 19, 1963 to Remigio Benavidez Sta.Ana and Emma Cecilio Catral in Manila, Philippines. He moved to the United States at the age of 24, shortly after finishing a degree in Dentistry. He started his art career late just before he was turning 40- having a solo show of digital works using appropriated images from free porn sites which he deconstructed and embellished with images and symbols culled from Filipino talismans. His practice has become multi-disciplinary, and while still utilizing found images and materials, he also employs the technique of …

Maria Deau Senior Art Portfolio, Maria Deau

Senior Art Portfolios

No abstract provided.

Trauma And Recovery: A Confessional Process, Mia Siracusa

Scripps Senior Theses

This paper is about a confessional painting series, which appropriates Abstract Expressionist techniques, and is on geometric canvas reliefs. The main focus through out the series is the process of my recovery from a traumatic event and the process of the creation of a language through abstraction.

Daughter, Wife, Mother: Women As Emblems Of Indian Authenticity Throughout The Diaspora, Saloni Kaur Kalkat

Scripps Senior Theses

It has been over a century since the maternal side of my family has resided in the natal land of our cultural heritage and religious proclivities – Punjab, India, where Sikhism was established. As an American I continue this extension of our roots from their source. Through the process of shifting location, cultural confluence, and passing time the experiences of the women in each successive generation of my family have altered significantly through our diasporic existence. However, even in the aftermath of colonization and immigration, the enduring responsibility of women is reliant upon their relation to family.

This ideology is …

Gary Brewer - Dark Matter Series, Gary Brewer

The Transdisciplinary STEAM+ Journal

In the Dark Matter series of paintings I am abstracting images from NASA’s efforts to map dark matter using the Hubble Space Telescope. From these abstractions I create diaphanous veils of blue that convey a sense of movement; the movement suggests primal forces: wind, water air and fire.

The figure in the foreground is one of the elements: gold, copper, silver, which develop into a variety of fantastic shapes. The ‘elements’ which are the foundation of life on earth, are born in the heart of a star and explode out into the universe upon its death and collapse. The force …

Searching For The Sublime, Kheng Saik Lim

Theses and Dissertations

The influential philosophers Edmund Burke and Emmanuel Kant understand the sublime as events and objects that cause an emotional reaction so magnificent that the intellect fails to comprehend it. It is thus deeply felt and experienced but remains undefined and non-understood. Searching for the Sublime is a suite of paintings that seek to respond to these definitions of the sublime. Together they address and evoke themes of mystery, fear, power, and the unknowable through the medium of painting.

An Aesthetic Theory Of Gamesmanship, Derek A. Fordjour

Theses and Dissertations

An Aesthetic Theory of Gamesmanship is an in-depth analysis of the personal, sociological, and historical elements contained within the art of Derek Fordjour with considerations given to artistic and literary influences that inform his intention and goals in the work. Also included are illustrations of specific art works and descriptions.

Departing From Photography. Place, Space, Non-Place, And The Quotidian: Painting From Pictures Of The Everyday, Mathew A. Tucker

Theses and Dissertations

This paper investigates the relationship between photography and painting. It explores the way in which Mathew Tucker's paintings have been informed by his photographs of everyday places and the ways that they depart from those images and express new and different meanings.