Sandra's Senior Studio

  22"x30", Watercolor Artists Statement: There is beauty in functionality. A gas station shines brightly to anyone driving on an empty tank. Streetlamps are looming, ugly sculptures that we would be lost and blind without. Unappealing elements do not escape my paintings because they are indicative of human compromise. The raw reality of our lives is seen in open dumpsters, shifting sidewalks, and plastic shopping bags blowing in the wind. Years from now I want to look back at these paintings from when I was young and remember those ugly metal sculptures, and the other basic compromises we made to live better lives.  The quality of watercolor helps to create a sense of surrealism. The watery marks are reminiscent of a dream-like state which creates a strong instigator for drawing on the viewer’s pre-existing memories. My goal is to use this medium to capture the seemingly banal, hoping to recreate the rawness of the landscape while allowing ambiguity for individual connectio...

 Here are some works I've made in the past week or so, just working with application of the paint. I'm thinking about ways to capture light through color usage and allowing spots of ambiguity in the layering process.  Still working on final painting for our final critique! See you all soon!

 

 I had an urge to figure out all the perspectives. I was considering practical use of this perspective for upcoming landscape paintings but I've decided against it mostly. Doesn't have the effect I was expecting.  Anyways, I enjoyed messing around and trying this out. For this image I made everything outside of the 5-point container into one-point perspective, trying to get the feeling that you were situated in the room. Here's the progress shots: I thought the drawing actually looked a bit nicer than the painting. After doing the image in the TV i had a bit of an AH-HA moment and really enjoyed how looser coloring looked. So I tried that kind of painting in this next one that utilizes two 5-point perspective areas. I think that way of painting is much more interesting to look at.  I'll be using that kind of painterly style in future paintings (likely) but will be saying goodbye to the use of exaggerated perspectives for the semester. I tried it and now I'm happy to...

 Here is my favorite work from reading week: Just a short update here: I was continuing with painting landscape images from life. I continually reminded myself to allow the watercolors to be transparent in this one. I was really struggling with how to present snow. I think the one above does it pretty well and the one below you can see my struggle.  Then I started playing around with some indoor imagery! I haven't been putting limitations on what scenes I am creating, I just paint anything that seems interesting. So, here is a raised china cabinet: From here I've started working on some forced perspective paintings, such as 5-point perspective. It's taken me a couple days to really figure it out, and an update will come soon on the progress of that! Thanks for taking time to read this :)