Archives Proposal
I imagine this piece to look like a cohesive set of faces that all look alike as well as have none of them look the same. It will be painted using raw sienna acrylic paint on a 5ft by 7ft piece of raw canvas. I want the piece to engulf the viewer with its size and give the feel of it surrounding the viewer. For this project we were told to think of a utopia, while also being inspired by the idea of archives. The project got me thinking about representation and the ability to see people who look like me and people who look different from me, not just in the media but in our day to day lives. I was inspired by ideas of affinity and the connection that come from both being the same and being different from one another. The subject matter and materials used are heavily related, especially my choice to use only one color and that color being raw sienna. The color raw sienna is a brown tone with red undertones and no white tones. I wanted to use acrylic specifically because of the fact that it is water soluble and how there would be variations in its tone with every line as well as how it interacts with the raw canvas. This piece will forever be relevant to the world, it has to do with humans, and human interaction which we will never truly be able to get away from. It also has to do with race, beauty and how we all have the same features, eyes, nose and mouth, but everyones is different in shape, size and overall structure. I want to use these key aspects of what we know to make up a face and exaggerate them, even eliminate them in some. I will not be using any reference photos or core pieces of influence, I want it all to be naturally generated from me and the flow of the process of creating the faces. I guess you could say my points of reference is every single face I have ever seen in my life and every face I have ever drawn or painted. I was also inspired by African masks and the use of warped facial features. These masks do a similar thing that I want my face to do with their use of eyes, nose and lips, as well as their variety. Some have hair, some have chins, some have cheekbones some have ears. I also wanted to have the addition of jewelry and ears being a main feature accompanying the faces. The history behind metal jewelry in many cultures around the world see jewelry as a symbol of status and honor, which I think is beautiful. Most of the faces have facial features that can be characterized into different oppressed groups, I want none of the faces to look inherently white. This piece is incredibly representative of history and ways art has depicted people of color in the past, which is something I have worked with before in art pieces. One of the main influences of this piece is african looking features and how they can be translated into other races. Being mixed I wanted to use this as a personal homage to the fact that none of my features can fit into a singular race and hold much ambiguity. I like to put myself in my art pieces because I do think that all art pieces take a little bit of the artist with them when they are created. I really want this piece to show connections and create narratives between each of the faces. I want to pay attention to which way they are looking, their interaction with other faces. In order to do this I will use lines that will usually come in groups of three because I see three as a number of power and balance and it is a motif that I want to stand out. With this piece I am very much trying to challenge the viewer with their ideas of what makes up a face, as well as what makes up a person. I want the viewer to ask themselves what do I see, who do I see, where have I seen them before? I like that all the questions I am asking are incredibly individualized to each viewer and their experiences. This piece will be a challenge for me, not only because of the scale of the work and the difference in materials. It will be most challenging because of pressuring myself to work with the process of making it and my natural flow while also still trying to come up with original faces and pay as much attention to their placement on the piece as I want to. It will also be hard because with the way I want to paint it I can't really make any mistakes, I have to work with whatever I put down and build off of it further.