Freedom Project

The sense of complete freedom and control I had over this project really helped me to enjoy it a lot. As this was our first ever project that was left entirely up to us, I found that it was a great time to move back to more travelled territory for me. Throughout this year, I have strayed away from painting and more towards sculpture and three-dimensional projects. I took this project as my opportunity to go back to painting and work on something that I am used to. With that in mind, I did not just mindlessly paint, but I looked to better my understanding of painting and bring in qualities and knowledge that I have accumulated over a lot of time and many projects. I feel like my artistic voice is finally starting to show itself a little bit and I seem to be moving towards painting.
My intentions for this project only ever shifted a little bit. Originally, as I have talked about, I wanted to emulate Lisa Escherick's work by adding some detail but not too much. Also, my fresh, new, not Branson subject matter made me enthusiastic about my work. As my piece progressed, I wound up actually not including all that much detail. I was able to get across my feeling more by working with the textures and colors of the paint. I really would not have changed anything in my process except for hopefully for the next project, have some more time. I used a lot of my previous knowledge about painting in order to work with underlying colors and textures, but in this specific project I was able to add to that by using the matt medium for the first time. It helped tremendously with my work and it was a lot of fun to work with. I was very pleased with my final piece but I hope to be able to work on it more in the future in order to perfect a few things.
This project was a big leap for me and my understanding of myself of an artist. As I previously mentioned, I believe that my artistic voice began to peak its head out during this process. I am really drawn to using color and texture to convey an emotional feeling in my work. I think that details can take away from the flowing nature of my work where there aren't many harsh changes in scenery. Overall, I am excited to now be able to delve into and explore my new found artistic voice maybe not in the upcoming resident artistic project, but in whatever comes next.