2018 Semester

Through reflection I was able to better understand my style of painting in regards to the categories in which we had to paint. Although each series of paintings was supposed to represent a particular style of painting, I realized that all of them had the undertone of Instrumentalism. I like to use my paintings as a means in relating a message to my audience.

This semester granted me the opportunity to push myself not only in the techniques I would use but also in the sheer production number. Never before had I produced so many paintings in one semester. Looking back it is odd to think that each painting came from me with the same topic in mind because most of them are very different from one another.

After exhausting the topic of Ice, I think it's safe to say that my next set of paintings will have a different theme.

Below is a quick recap of the categories, along with the paintings from each.

Thanks for following along on this creative journey!

Instrumental

Instrumentalism is when art is used as an instrument to further a point of view that might be moral, social, religious or political. It demands that art be more than an aspect of decoration or beauty. That it stimulates people to think conceptually or make a change in the social world.

Expressionism

Expressionism "was inspired most heavily by the Symbolist currents in the late nineteenth-century art. Vincent van Gogh, Edvard Munch, and James Ensorproved particularly influential to the Expressionists, encouraging the distortion of form and the deployment of strong colors to convey a variety of anxieties and yearnings" (The Art Story). For me, I interpret expressionism as a representation of the inner state of the artist and using colour, gesture and ideas to convey meaning.

Formalism

Formalism is composed of basic elements: colour, line, composition, and texture. Together these elements constitute the fundamental language used by formalist artists such as Piet Mondrian and Jackson Pollock. The artwork can be a pure abstraction or representational but the main goal of the artist is to create a cohesive balance in the composition.