I have numbered the photos i have submitted.
The most recent project I completed in college was about the subject of gender and the way it stands in society as a source of stereotype and constriction, a topic I had experimented with artistically many times before in my own time. My sculpture (1-3) represents the merging of a human and a chair; an object confined to the house and created to be sat on by an owner. The figure is nailed down so as to make escape impossible and it holds a cigarette to represent the dismay of the situation of women in society. Through this project I was influenced most by Cindy Sherman and Sarah Lucas (in particular her Bunny Gets Snookered series). Picture 4 is my creating a symbol of the chair by painting a large-scale piece. Picture 5 is the image of a genderless figure constricted by bars that are neither behind nor before him/her, presenting the subconscious nature of the oppression of women. Pictures 6-7 are the result of 2 days working with artist Tom Wood as he visited our college. Through these few days I learned lots about compositional abstraction and went on to experiment with it in these two pieces as well as being taught interesting techniques on how to overcome problems by beginning the pieces by distorting the boards we were painting onto. Pictures 8-11 are further work on the project, experimenting with reflective hypothetical images and delving further into the topic of gender oppression. The last two images are from an earlier project on rhythm and the texture and indefinite existence of sound where I experimented with a variety of paints, inks, wax media and chalks and multi-media instillation.
Art is a huge part of my life already and i am incredibly excited about learning even more about it and having so much more free time to further delve into it as well as coming closer to my aspiration of one day teaching art as a career. The idea of inspiring a future generation of expressive artists as well as learning from them myself is nothing short of a dream to me.
