Anthony's Arm

Trying to paint a tattoo is one of the hardest things I think that I've ever attempted. To make it look like it is part of the arm and not just floating in front of it is difficult. For awhile it looked like I had ran up to someone's painting of an arm and painted on top of it. I'm glad that we did this in class because I learned a lot from it.

Esta muchacha esta pintada...

     I have continued to work with Spanish literature to further discover my interest in interpretation. As I continue to learn a second language I recognize changes in myself. I feel that I think more deeply as I sometimes have thoughts in two languages simultaneously. I also continue to learn about other cultures, which is something I did not expect to become so interested in. I am submersing myself in this research on many different levels. I still have a long way to go and I am nowhere near fluent but I am enjoying the journey to that goal. 

     Through my research I found this poem. I immediately pictured the girl in the poem and imagined her struggle to escape. She has been given the gift of flight in her existence on a sheet of thin paper.  I tied the fragile piece of paper to a frame of driftwood branches. She has been grounded to Earth but movement still exists as the paper catches drifts of wind and attempts to escape. I love that I had a hard time tying the paper down and in the wind it did almost fly away. Just like the girl in the poem it resisted my attempts to tie it down. 

LOURDES

Esta muchacha esta pintada
en un papel de arroz que es transparente
a la luz; ella vuela en su papel
al aire... Vuela con las hojas secas
y con los suspires perdidos.
Es la muchacha de papel y fuga;
es la leve, la ingrávida
muchacha de papel iluminado,
la de colores de agua...
La que nadie se atrevería
a besar por el miedo de borrarla...

This girl painted

on rice paper transparent

to the light: She flies on her paper

to the air… Flies with the dry leaves

and with the lost sighs.

She is the girl of paper and escape;

she is the light, weightless

girl of illuminated paper,

the colors of water…

That no one would dare

to kiss for fear of erasing.

Motociclista

First off, sorry, this photo needs to be edited. It is actually in a diamond shape orientation when it is displayed correctly I plan on fixing this tonight. This is another painting I did of a Julio Cortazar story. In La Noche Boca Arriba (The Night Face Up) a man has a motorcycle accident and is taken to the hospital. As he begins to slip in and out of consciousness he begins to dream that he is being hunted by the Aztecs who have turned his tribe into sacrifices to the gods. He becomes more an more aware that this dream might actually be reality. When he is conscious in the hospital he tries desperately one more time to stay awake and avoid his fate by reaching for his water glass next to his bed but his hand falls limp and he meets his fate. Throughout the whole story and even after it has ended I never decided which one was the real life of the main character, although I do hope he wasn't sacrificed! There is a second one (depicting the alternate reality) of this one to come this week!!

Linen Falls

This is a charcoal study I did of fabric hanging on the wall for drawing class. I like how creepy it looks and I can't quite decide if it reminds me of rigid water or bat wings.

Misconception

This is the second in my series on the perception of reality. I wanted to just hint at it in this one with the strange reflection in the bathtub. It was my way of saying that these problems may exist and be hard to detect. For this one I couldn't even sit flat in the doorway of my bathroom. I had imprints in my back from the trim on the walls and the 3 huge spotlights I used to light the water heated the bathroom up miserably. I couldn't turn the air conditioning on because I was sitting over it and it kept blowing my paper. I stuck through it for 11 hours on this drawing. Whew, good thing I got an A!

Delusion

In this drawing I started thinking of our perception of reality and how that can become diluted. In these cases the person starts to have a warped view of things and anything outside of that may begin to darken and become cloudy. They also aren't quite sure what it is that they are seeing. I wanted to mimic this phenomenon in an image. This one is done with graphite and took about 12 hours. I was perched on top of a chair with a stack of 6 phone books and balancing on top to be able to have just the right angle of my kitchen reflected in this coffee pot.

Attack!!

I LOVE old sci-fi posters! I wanted to put myself in one being chased by a ridiculously large ant. I am half smiling half screaming to match the absurdity of the classic movies. I used 3 different types of font in following with the over the top mismatched feel of the old posters. I also put an even cheesier quote on the bottom coming out of the can that reads,"Now that is going to take one big can of bug spray!" This is something that is on most of the old posters as well. Below is an example of one of my favorites.

Bolt!!

In this painting I was really playing with line and how drawings differ from paintings. I really began to look at colors and how they change in relation to one another. For example what happened to a red if I placed a purple right next to it. It seems a totally different color than when it is placed next to a yellow. I had fun with this project and it is totally different from my other work. I am working on how to incorporate line into my future pieces.

Cambio de Luces

This painting is titled Cambio de Luces after a Spanish story by Julio Cortazar. In the story the main character is a voice actor for a soap opera on the radio called Parrots in the Storm (ha). He receives a letter from a woman who wants to meet him. He starts to imagine her so much so that when they meet his goal is to slowly mold her into the woman he imaged her to be. The main part of his fantasy that when he imagined her writing him letters there was a soft light that she next to that softly lit her face. He is so crazy that he starts changing the lights in their apartment and when she can't even see to read he says, "I don't see what the big deal is read by the window!"(ha again) By the time he has molded her into his perfect woman she has went out and found a man that is exactly what she imagined our main character to be and is cheating on him! I titled my painting after this story because there is the created light that we have manufactured and then there is the sunlight which is lighting the light now. We create our form of light that distorts color and will never match the beauty of natural light.

Dog + Cake

This is  a still life painting I did in class this semester. We all had a turn destroying a cupcake/ monster cake then went to painting. I had fun with this painting because it was the first time that I really played with texture. The weird thing was that I kept expecting my paint to smell like icing!