Exhibition Text
Title: Home is Where the Heart is
Medium: Acrylic on Canvas
Size:61X91cm
January 30, 2016
This is a triptych I created using acrylic on canvas. The main focus of these panels is to demonstrate the idea of home and how important that aspect is to my life. My intention with this piece is to remind people to always remember their roots and origin, I tried to show that by including my hometown on the one of the panels. I have two artist that inspired me for all of the panels, I was inspired by Frida kahlo “Two Fridas” and “The Harvest” by Vincent Van Gogh for all three of the painting.
Medium: Acrylic on Canvas
Size:61X91cm
January 30, 2016
This is a triptych I created using acrylic on canvas. The main focus of these panels is to demonstrate the idea of home and how important that aspect is to my life. My intention with this piece is to remind people to always remember their roots and origin, I tried to show that by including my hometown on the one of the panels. I have two artist that inspired me for all of the panels, I was inspired by Frida kahlo “Two Fridas” and “The Harvest” by Vincent Van Gogh for all three of the painting.
Process
I first started with stretching my canvas, and then I gessoed it. After this step it was time to start brainstorming what I was going to do for my panels. It took me a few weeks to actually think of something to do for the panels, but I finally came up with an idea. Even though I had an idea right away for the panels, it took me a while to actually start painting on the panels because of procrastination. When I finally started painting, I did the background which I chose to be white. I was nervous to start drawing on the plane canvas because I was scared of messing it up and having to restarting things many times. In order to avoid this, I decided to improve my drawing skills by practicing and sketching on my sketch book. As time went on I realized that my drawing were getting better and better so I started to draw on my canvas. I was content with the way my drawing turned out so I started to paint in the sketches on the canvas. Here are some picture to demonstrate what I'm talking about.
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This was when I began to start painting and I had a different idea for this panel. I initially wanted to make the lake red and make the heart look like it's bleeding into the lake. However, I soon realized that didn't look and I decided to change it into a blue color.
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This panel was also changed in some ways. With this panel I decided to change the sky because I didn't like the way it looked. I thought it looked tacky and I wanted some harmony between the water and the sky so I decided to make the sky blue just like the water and it looked better.
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This is a sketch of a heart. I tried really hard to draw. Since I knew I wasn't going to be able to trace or use a projector I decided to try and make my drawing skills better which in my opinion is really bad. I put this up because this was the third heart that I drew but somehow this turned out better than the rest so I'm proud of it.
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Artist Inspiration
When I Initially began this project I had no clue who I wanted to get some inspiration from because I didn't have any ideas. I knew that in order to have any ideas, I first needed to get inspired. I looked at my sketch book from sophomore year to find some inspiration and I instantly found one right away. I really liked Frida Kahlo's artwork a lot especially her " two Fridas" I liked how the heart had a lot of symbolism. I knew right away that I wanted to do something with heart and home but I wanted to inc operate another artist for the style of some parts of the painting. Since I wanted to put my hometown in the paintings and most of it is grass and streams I wanted an art movement that had some movement. The perfect art movement for movement was impressionism, and I really enjoyed this one painting by Vincent Van Gogh. His " The Harvest" was my inspiration for a portion for one of my panels. I was inspired by that painting in particular because it reminded me of my old hometown which had a lot of farming and grass with some streams, so this piece inspired me to paint my hometown the way it is suppose to look like.
Meaning
There is a lot of meaning behind all of these panel. When I heard that we needed to do something with the city and show how it has effected you, I knew right away that I wanted to symbolize home. However, I noticed that I had two homes technically, where I spent my childhood and the Milwaukee which is like another home to me. I put the two ideas together and I put them both in one painting, and that is my last painting. I placed drawing of Milwaukee on the right side of the heart to represent that Milwaukee will always be in my heart. I also put my hometown into the left side of heart to represent that it will never leave my heart because that place is my origin and it will always remain in my heart. So for the panel with the open heart, I wanted to show that those two places will always be in my heart no matter what, this painting is the city in the artist. For the Artist panel, I wanted to show that I'm indecisive and still keep the heart theme going. I thought that a heart and brain would be perfect to symbolize an indecisive person because those two are the ones that always fight when it comes to decisions. My heart always says one thing and my brain is always like "no" and they never agree on things, sometimes they do but they mostly don't agree. To exhibit this, I painted a heart and brain trying to connect but not entirely meeting each other. The anatomical position of the heart and brain is different from how I painted it because I wanted to show that my heart always wins over my brain, I always follow my heart. With the third and final piece I wanted to continue with the heart theme and still display the Artist in the City, and so I put my heart as the sun of Milwaukee. I wanted to show that I will always be loyal to the city, like I will forever appreciate what it has offered me.