semester Plan

I am working on a few different works this semester. I have been making brightly colored abstract paintings using imagery of the neighborhood that I live in, views from the street and above. This neighborhood is very close and similar to the ones I grew up in here in Sarasota. To make the pictures, I either use the outlines of the landscapes to produce something like an abstracted map, or overlay the imagery until there are few recognizable images. In this series, I use mostly acrylic paint on canvas, but also use pastels, pencils, markers, and inks. In each painting something new comes up, some things are intentional, others not. Regardless, I end up with paintings that I enjoy. Because I use a neighborhood that has been undergoing gentrification, there are social, economic, race, and political issues that concern me while I make the work. The paintings that I end up with, do not communicate any of this, but to me, it is still important.

I am also working on a series of graphite drawings on Mylar. Each drawing is a tracing of the New York Times front page. It began August 22, and is ongoing. I don’t not have an end-date yet.  In both works I am tracing. In this case I am meticulously and painstakingly rendering the front page of the newspaper. (Each drawing is not a full page; some content is missing from each one. This has to do with the amount of time I spend on each one, I do not have the full 8 hours per day it takes to render a complete page, but I also do not have enough time to read an entire paper, look up the words that I don’t know, research the history of what I haven’t learned, and keep it all in my memory, everyday.) In the painting series I am projecting images and tracing them on to a canvas even though I am obscuring the original imagery. By tracing them I am literally replicating the image, but I am also rereading and rethinking the history of what is happening today. It is in such a literal way, that I find humor in it. What good does it do to hand trace newspapers? Why not just photocopy, or print from the Internet? It’s an archaic method for recreating a dying and convoluted form of communication. By turning the newspaper into a drawing, the words are less important, they become lost, by leaving out parts, although this isn’t really a conceptual choice, blocks of information are missing, just as they are missing in the original media (and by this I mean, who can actually trust their news?). I am a filter for the information, in the same way that everyone is able to choose what to read or believe.

My timeline is to work on the drawings everyday, and to produce a minimum of one painting a week. Studio visits are welcome at any point.