Evaluate and Discuss the Technique and Process:
1. What decisions throughout your process were risky or bold?
By the last part of the semester I felt more relaxed and had a good feeling about my possibilities to break the technique. The possibilities of using different strokes, and the possibility of working over an old piece and being able to resolve it was challenging. The process of building my paintings by using more paint was challenging as well, but I enjoyed seeing the possibilities.
2. What decisions were safe or unchallenging to your usual way of working?
The use of transparent layers of paint, the same technique (oil on canvas), as well as continuing exploring the same female image representation, was something that I was doing before.
Discuss Material Choices
1. Why did you choose the materials you used?
I used the same materials I have been using for awhile. I think I need to resolve many things with this technique, before I move on to use other kinds of materials.
2. How did you use the unique qualities inherent to the medium? How would the work change if you used a different medium?
During this semester, I was playing with different qualities of paint, sometimes transparent, sometimes thicker, with the intention to resolve the flatness of the painting and create more depth. If the medium were different the approach to the technique would be different, for example, if I were using watercolor, of course the technique would be different and I wouldn’t be able to resolve my work in the way that I was expecting.
3. Consider the scale of the work. What aspects of technique or content would be jeopardized, and which would be enhanced if the work was much larger or smaller?
I think if I were working on a small scale, and in the way that I read the work, I would lose some of the concept. In a bigger scale, I might lose the intimate aspect of my content. However, I would very much like to explore large scale work such as the scale of Enrique Chagoya. It seems like the size would invite you to develop different concepts as well.
Discuss Content and Meaning
1. Use adjectives to describe your approach (relentless, harsh, affectionate, considered, etc.)
Slow, considered, energetic
2. How does the relationship between the image and the speed or attitude with which it is executed, add content to the work?
The way I approach painting, in the beginning, is kind of fast and energetic. But, when I view the painting, I need to slow down and negotiate with the painting. It is sometimes hard to move from one image to another. It doesn’t let you go ahead and move to work on another section or image of the painting. For example, the painting which I’m painting on top of is very complicated for me. I’m only now resolving the background image with the new image.
3. What are the ideas and message you are working through? How do you lead us to this message or meaning? Do you leave room for the viewer to form opinions about the subject, or is your work more didactic?
The ideas I’m working on have to do with the change and analysis of the representation of the female body and present a different way to read the female image. I’m using images of female representation that are stereotyped and in poses that are very sexualized. I want to make this stereotype obvious but at the same time to present the absurdity and wrongness of these particular images. I think I leave room for the viewer to assume or to detect by themselves the meaning of the painting.
4. What makes your work personal? What techniques have you used that make the process personal?
Well, I think the way I work with the composition is what makes my work personal or recognizable. I can also be recognized by my content, my color choice and transparent layers of paint.
Discuss Context
1. Which artists are you influenced by and what do you borrow/steal from them?
I like artists such as Kiki Smith, Louise Bourgeois, but I’m not sure if I am influenced by them.
2. How do your paintings relate to historical “schools” or “movements” within the last forty years? How do they differ?
Probably, my work is influenced by modernism and feminist artists that were working with the body. They were working in performance and video, but I’m still working on these ideas through painting.
3. What current events or circumstances influence your paintings? (pop culture, politics, new media, technology, international events, etc.)
New media and technology influence my work – all the interest that feminist artists of the 60’s had for the concept about the representation of the female body.
4. What makes your project relevant?
I think that there are few painters who are working on the concept of the female body and the way the body is represented in culture. I believe that art is a media that can change reality, not exactly as political propaganda, but it’s way to present reality in a different way.
