The goal of this project was to create a mobile structure in which a suite of paintings could be transported and viewed. When the structure and paintings are arranged as an "installation," they will create a more active role for a "viewer" who could then be defined as a "participant." The participant would be involved in the assembly of the environment and would find more opportunities for interaction in the assembled environment than he or she would in a traditional gallery or museum setting. A description and explanation of the processes involved in the creation of this project is preceded by a discussion of different historical, cultural, and methodological ways by which artwork is or has been presented. Also referenced are different artists and philosophies that informed this project. / Department of Art

The culmination of my graduate research and investigations is my thesis exhibition Solace; Intimately Remembered Places. This body of paintings is a visual representation of land, water and flora that focuses on my abstraction of nature to extract essential elements that expresses my deep connection to a specific time and place, layered with associated memories. By revisiting a landscape over a sustained period of time, I developed a personal visual vocabulary to communicate the essential abstract forms of nature and record the subtle nuances of color, light, shape, texture, positive and negative space to evoke a particular time and place. I expanded my painting techniques through the addition of a laser cutter. Rooted in a background of graphic design, my thesis also incorporated and included a book form using similar strategies. / Includes bibliography. / Thesis (M.F.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2017. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

No description available.

The research question explored in this exhibition and dissertation was to review the conventional notions of craftsmanship and the use of the specific medium of oil paint with reference to the art of Rembrandt and Damien Hirst. The subject matter is flesh. This study foregrounds the involvement and acknowledgment of the corporeal body, the hand of the artist, and of the organic material reality of our existence and the objects that surround us. The paintings reflect a series of interventions that resulted in abstracted images based on photographs of meat. Once a detail had emerged that emphasised the fleshiness of the selected image, it was printed by a professional printing company. These details were then translated into oil paintings. What is explored is the specific material qualities of the binding mediums traditionally associated with the use of oil painting to create expressive paintings. In the creation of the series of paintings, I prepared binding mediums consisting of wax, stand oil, damar varnish, zel-ken liquin and acrylic paste medium mixed with manufactured readymade oil paints. Consequently the choice and exploration of the material possibilities of a specific medium becomes content, using art to explore the idea of art. Paint becomes flesh-like, having congealed over the surface of the technical support. These paintings propose an internal and an external reality simultaneously referenced through the flesh-like surface, pierced and cut to reveal multiple layers created on the supporting structure (wood and canvas) with the use of a specific medium, oil paint, combined with a variety of other binding mediums. The edges of the unframed paintings play an important role assuming a specific physical presence, enabling them to define themselves as boundaries, both of the paintings particular field of forces and of the viewer’s aesthetic experience. They are no longer edges or frames in the conventional sense, but become other surfaces that are of equal significance in the reading or viewing of the work. Finally, the notion of an exhibition site being neutral or given is contested and, as a result, the contemporary artist needs to be mindful of site specificity in relation to the exhibition of the artworks. This series of paintings is intended to communicate as a body of work, reflecting an individual vision: a recurring, introspective process that is always unfolding. The body is constantly recreated by each individual viewer, and the context or site of display. The artist’s intention is to activate the viewer’s heightened awareness and response to the conscious arrangement of the collection of canvases, as each one represents a fragment or detail of a flayed carcass.