Title The Portrait: An exploration of time and age through the lens of portraiture.
I want to spend the 4th term of the year painting, Because I think that spending that much time exclusively on art would help me to become a better artist. I plan on going to art school for the next four years, and I think that it would be a good step for me to transition into spending most of my time on art instead of on the courses I'm taking now.
Dream BigI want to create four or five large (aprox. 3x4 ft) completed portraits. Each portrait will have a different person as a subject, and my subjects will vary in age as much as possible. I would like the paintings when viewed together to show the passage of time, and how it affects and changes us as people. At different stages in our lives, we perceive ourselves very differently, and so we project different images through our choices of expression, styles of clothing, and our general demeanor. I hope to convey through these paintings a feeling of unity - we all experience age based changes in our bodies and our personalities - in convergence with a feeling of uniqueness - in that one of the things we pride ourselves most on as people is our differences both physically and in personality. The paintings will attempt to convey a feeling of the passage of time, and the common effect that the passage of time has on us. I will choose subjects based both on age, and on how interesting and expressive I find their features to be. I want to describe people in the community of Newton in these paintings, a child who i have babysat, friends of my younger sister, my own friends, a resident of a nursing home where I have volunteered in the past, people who are connected by the shared experience of living here together. These will be people who will have to be willing to spend a fair amount of time with me, and we will be collaborating to a certain extent. I want to get to know them, how their experiences have shaped them, and what they believe in order to create honest paintings of these people. Connecting with and relating to people around my own age and younger will be much easier for me than with people so much older than me that we have very few superficially common experiences. The emotions caused by these experiences however, are the things that we do all have in common.
ScopeI hope to complete four or five 3x4 ft (size may vary) portraits, all using different people as subjects. Since this will be such a large amount of work, I will have to spend most of my time focused on painting in order to reach my goals. This could be a challenge since I have never attempted a project this big. During my Freshman and Sophomore years I did a week long art project at the end of each semester, creating a series of works in each project. My SYP is more ambitious than those, but I have experience spending days at a time on a single art work, and I am excited to do that on a bigger scale. Making sure that I find subjects who are available to let me paint them for significant blocks of time could also be a challenge, but as long as I plan carefully with the people allowing me to paint them, this should not become an issue.
Gauge of SuccessI will consider this project successful if I create a body of work which conveys the feeling of the passage of time through expresion of specific moments for specific people. I hope that this will mean four or five large paintings, but I do not yet know if this is an unrealistic goal. I will feel that the project is successful even if I create slightly fewer paintings than I plan to make, as long as those paintings show an honest communication between the subject and me.
Background/Prior knowledgeSince I was very young art has been a big part of my life. My parents always made sure to give me the opportunity to make art, since it has always been a big part of both of their lives. At North, I am in the art major four class and in ceramics two. At the school that I attended for my freshman and sophomore years I took a Beginning drawing class, an advanced drawing class, a beginning painting class and an advanced painting class. I also participated in non-graded evening classes in ceramics, jewelry making, spinning(yarn) and figure drawing. In addition to the art classes at Putney, we also had Project Week at the end of every semester. Project week is a week long period of time where every student chooses two projects to spend all week on. One of my projects was a study of the head, and how to accurately draw it. I have been going to figure drawing classes and drop in studios outside of school since my freshman year. Both last spring and this fall I have taken life drawing classes at Mass Art. I find figure study to be tremendously helpful to my work which is the thing that has led me to become interested in communicating the figure, and more specifically the figure in portraits for my SYP.
Research question vs. Field WorkI would like to write a research paper exploring the history of portraiture. I want to investigate the evolution of the portrait as a means of capturing a personality in one work of art. Since the development of photography the art world has changed dramatically from a way of capturing big events, and in portraits status and often wealth, to a way of capturing emotion, and in portraits the feeling of a moment, rather than of a lifetime. I would like to incorporate my research into my project by learning from the artists whom i research and allowing pieces of their styles to influence my own work. Who / what to turn to for helpI will be continuing to work with Ms. Slattery, my current art teacher. I will also be asking the advice of Susy Waters, an artist and friend who's work I respect greatly, and who has given me constructive feedback on my work in the past.
I want to spend the 4th term of the year painting, Because I think that spending that much time exclusively on art would help me to become a better artist. I plan on going to art school for the next four years, and I think that it would be a good step for me to transition into spending most of my time on art instead of on the courses I'm taking now.
Dream BigI want to create four or five large (aprox. 3x4 ft) completed portraits. Each portrait will have a different person as a subject, and my subjects will vary in age as much as possible. I would like the paintings when viewed together to show the passage of time, and how it affects and changes us as people. At different stages in our lives, we perceive ourselves very differently, and so we project different images through our choices of expression, styles of clothing, and our general demeanor. I hope to convey through these paintings a feeling of unity - we all experience age based changes in our bodies and our personalities - in convergence with a feeling of uniqueness - in that one of the things we pride ourselves most on as people is our differences both physically and in personality. The paintings will attempt to convey a feeling of the passage of time, and the common effect that the passage of time has on us. I will choose subjects based both on age, and on how interesting and expressive I find their features to be. I want to describe people in the community of Newton in these paintings, a child who i have babysat, friends of my younger sister, my own friends, a resident of a nursing home where I have volunteered in the past, people who are connected by the shared experience of living here together. These will be people who will have to be willing to spend a fair amount of time with me, and we will be collaborating to a certain extent. I want to get to know them, how their experiences have shaped them, and what they believe in order to create honest paintings of these people. Connecting with and relating to people around my own age and younger will be much easier for me than with people so much older than me that we have very few superficially common experiences. The emotions caused by these experiences however, are the things that we do all have in common.
ScopeI hope to complete four or five 3x4 ft (size may vary) portraits, all using different people as subjects. Since this will be such a large amount of work, I will have to spend most of my time focused on painting in order to reach my goals. This could be a challenge since I have never attempted a project this big. During my Freshman and Sophomore years I did a week long art project at the end of each semester, creating a series of works in each project. My SYP is more ambitious than those, but I have experience spending days at a time on a single art work, and I am excited to do that on a bigger scale. Making sure that I find subjects who are available to let me paint them for significant blocks of time could also be a challenge, but as long as I plan carefully with the people allowing me to paint them, this should not become an issue.
Gauge of SuccessI will consider this project successful if I create a body of work which conveys the feeling of the passage of time through expresion of specific moments for specific people. I hope that this will mean four or five large paintings, but I do not yet know if this is an unrealistic goal. I will feel that the project is successful even if I create slightly fewer paintings than I plan to make, as long as those paintings show an honest communication between the subject and me.
Background/Prior knowledgeSince I was very young art has been a big part of my life. My parents always made sure to give me the opportunity to make art, since it has always been a big part of both of their lives. At North, I am in the art major four class and in ceramics two. At the school that I attended for my freshman and sophomore years I took a Beginning drawing class, an advanced drawing class, a beginning painting class and an advanced painting class. I also participated in non-graded evening classes in ceramics, jewelry making, spinning(yarn) and figure drawing. In addition to the art classes at Putney, we also had Project Week at the end of every semester. Project week is a week long period of time where every student chooses two projects to spend all week on. One of my projects was a study of the head, and how to accurately draw it. I have been going to figure drawing classes and drop in studios outside of school since my freshman year. Both last spring and this fall I have taken life drawing classes at Mass Art. I find figure study to be tremendously helpful to my work which is the thing that has led me to become interested in communicating the figure, and more specifically the figure in portraits for my SYP.
Research question vs. Field WorkI would like to write a research paper exploring the history of portraiture. I want to investigate the evolution of the portrait as a means of capturing a personality in one work of art. Since the development of photography the art world has changed dramatically from a way of capturing big events, and in portraits status and often wealth, to a way of capturing emotion, and in portraits the feeling of a moment, rather than of a lifetime. I would like to incorporate my research into my project by learning from the artists whom i research and allowing pieces of their styles to influence my own work.
Who / what to turn to for helpI will be continuing to work with Ms. Slattery, my current art teacher. I will also be asking the advice of Susy Waters, an artist and friend who's work I respect greatly, and who has given me constructive feedback on my work in the past.