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Date of Award

1-7-2016

Document Type

Thesis-ISU Access Only

Degree Name

Master of Fine Arts (MFA)

Department

School of Art

First Advisor

Melissa Oresky

Abstract

My recent paintings use semi-representational environments as a means of stimulating viewers to think about the identification of relationships among painted spaces/objects and how this activity relates to the complexity and multiplicity of internal states of being and internal experience. At their core, my paintings are a way for me to learn about the inner nature of myself and others: how consciousness collapses myriad possibilities into a single reality, and how it also has the ability to change our initial impressions (what had become for a time, our reality). In my paintings, I posit that inanimate subjects can open an awareness of such questions concerning consciousness. These ideas manifest in my exploration of the visual relationships that form between disparate areas of paint on canvas. How are we affected when external forces (such as the weather, seasons, climate, even our societies as a whole) change? How does our view of those things change when circumstances within us are different? My work has been influenced by research into phenomenology, the human perceptual system, Absurdism, and Buddhism. In order to express these concepts through paintings, I have turned to artists and both past and present including Dexter Dalwood, Peter Doig, Verne Dawson, Angela Dufresne, Dana Schutz, Joan MirÃ, Giorgio de Chirico, and Henri Matisse, among others. In addition, I let ideas, preoccupations, memories, imagination, and personal experiences inform the paintings I make. These fragmentary elements composed and are reflected in the collage-like arrangement of my paintings. How the fragments work together or oppose each other in the mind of the viewer contributes to how the environment they inhabit is understood.

Comments

Imported from ProQuest Farber_ilstu_0092N_10668.pdf

DOI

http://doi.org/10.30707/ETD2016.Farber.E

Page Count

56

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