Title: Femininity
Medium: Acrylic on canvas Size: 60.96 cm x 91.44 cm October 2016 Exhibition Text The main focus of my piece was to portray the image of a woman who with out expressions, dialogue, or words on the actual canvas, conveys feminist attitudes through the use of placement and color. It was inspired by the art movement of impressionism. My original intentions were to create a piece that resembles nudity, and stepping outside of my comfort zone by doing so. All is self-made within the medium. |
Process
Planning At the beginning of the project, I had many ideas come across my head. I knew for sure that I wanted to create piece that resembled a woman showing certain parts of her body. At first, I wanted to create a cultural piece based off of "La Santa Muerte" and then I wanted catholisism to be the inspiration. At last, I wasn't satisfied with any of my brainstorming ideas, so I chose a more simplistic one that still portrays my attitudes and satisfies what I wanted to do. To the left are my planning sketches. |
Process
Building Canvas The very first step to my project was to obviously build the canvas. I thought about using a different medium, such as cardboard, paper, or wood, but when I realized that I wanted to use color and that those mediums weren't going to allow me to have as much flexibility, I decided to go with canvas. The process was as usual: building the frame first, then wrapping the canvas around it, and finally adding gesso and allowing for it to dry. |
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Painting
The painting part of the canvas was what took me the lonest time. I had a large amount of colors that I wanted to mix and use, however, one of my goals was to not repeat any of the colors more than twice. I painted by parts, focusing and starting on the bottom part first and moving to the top afterwards. Another reason why the painting part of this project was the one that took the longest was because I didn't only use simple brush strokes, but instead, long and curved ones. The process is on the right. |
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Artistic Inspiration
This specific piece was inspired by the art movement of impressionism. I attempted to use the overall movement, which consists of vivid colors and multiple brush strockes to create an image. The movement also tends to attempt and capture a still life image, so the viewer can imagine what is on the painting and can interpret it as a photograph or a snaphot of a specific event. Absolutely everything on this piece is covered with color and brushstrockes that seem to be infinite. Some of the influencing art works within the movement of impressionism are to the right. |
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Meaning/Theme of the Piece
The meaning behind my piece is the resemblence of the society that we live in today. We tend to objectify women, and not look beyond that. A woman today is judged on size, not or morality or values. My painting itself depicts a woman who is facing her back, and who is also naked. Around her, are a veriety of colors that are there to make a distinction between the sea and the sky. This is noted through the contrast between warm and cool colors in the painting. This distinction is made to compare femininity to nature, and the beauty of it. Without using any dialogue, my painting clearly expresses feminism because the setting around it and the focus as well are very feminine, and my intentions are to show the objectified that the society has become, because besides everything else that is going on in the painting, the viewer is temted to look at the tush. |
Reflection
When I had envisioned this piece, I thought that it would've had a more gloomy feel to it. I chose colors that in my head made sense to use, but in the canvas gave the painting a vivid more lively feel to it. Since this was the first time painting a nude, I had to step outside of my comfort zone because of the frequent curious questioning by my peers, which ranged from "Is that you?" to "Who is she, why is she naked?". Overall, despite the difficulties with coming up with techniques and making different colors by mixing paints, I feel like this project was successful because I feel satisfied to have accomplished my intentions and happy to see the result. |
ACT Questions
The central idea around my inspirational search was to incorporate the same techniques of the impressionist movements to my piece so that therefore, my overall appproachh would be more justified and clearly inspired by a movement. Without the inspiration in my artwork, it would make the feeling diminish and would maybe even make my piece a little ackward. I have discovered that the idea of placing people either nude or not nude but just minding their bussiness and adding color and emphazis changes the whole view of that work of art.
The central idea around my inspirational search was to incorporate the same techniques of the impressionist movements to my piece so that therefore, my overall appproachh would be more justified and clearly inspired by a movement. Without the inspiration in my artwork, it would make the feeling diminish and would maybe even make my piece a little ackward. I have discovered that the idea of placing people either nude or not nude but just minding their bussiness and adding color and emphazis changes the whole view of that work of art.