WE ARE ALL EGGS

Abstract

As my time at the University of Washington is winding down to a bittersweet end, my practice in my second year has led me to intensify an already bright color palette and intentionally artificial materiality to capture and consume viewers' attention. With striking aesthetics, I strive to maintain the sacred goal of compelling an audience to linger and explore, giving my paintings more than a passing glance.I draw inspiration from late Byzantine mosaics, allegorical paintings from the Renaissance, and visionary artwork by Hilma af Klint. I aspire to create similar impacts of awe, rumination, and awakening through my colorful, playful, cartoon-like stylization. My current body of work seeks to connect humanity to creating a prophecy by boiling down complex ideas, forms, and concepts to their most basic unit, which is the symbol of the egg. I use artificial, plastic-looking colors to contrast the divine, paying homage to the new gods that have emerged under the vindictive and compelling theocracy of capitalism and other systemic structures within modern society. The delicious artificiality of acrylic paint, paired with my internal desire to create an all-inclusive, self-contained world where everyone can joyfully coexist, manifests itself into something that has the opportunity to become real and, therefore, is more than a dream. Amidst real-world chaos, madness, and confusion, my ambition is to create beams of joy through my art to offset the mundane and operate as a catalyst to envision a brighter, kinder, loving, and, most of all, delightful future. Since the beginning of my studio practice, specifically in Seattle for my MFA degree, my transition from small, intimate works on sketchbooks (due to no studio access over the pandemic) has boomed into complete wall-sized paintings. However, on every scale, I strive to create a visual language in addition to a maker's mark or style with repeating motifs, patterns, color palettes, and subjects. Creating a unique stylization has been one of the most important goals I have focused on as an artist. I believe it is the purest testament and the truest dedication to the contribution to the canon of art and art history to individualize yourself among the millions of artworks existing as we know it and be identified by your unique visual cadence. As I additionally have an academic background in Art History, specifically 15-16th century Italian Renaissance and late Byzantine periods, I have familiarized myself with the importance of composition, visual rhythm, iconography, staple, motif, and characterization in a way that propels viewers beyond the work and into imaginative realms. Adding a grander space to create has heavily influenced my work after my first quarter in Fall 2022. As I was trying to illustrate vast spacescapes within the confines of an 11x14(+)" sketch pad, working exponentially larger allowed my style to evolve and become an exploration of world-building, character design, and creating my visual cosmology. The critiques I have received thus far have made me consider new ways to handle paint, especially in color and material. Though I love a rainbow palette, my rainbow has become more intentional through conversations with faculty about how to shift the mood I am trying to convey through more color specificity.