Senior Capstone Art Exhibit 2022

James K. Schmidt Gallery

Principia College

Elsah, IL

5 Mile Radius…

Inspired by locations I grew up in from Carmel and Big Sur.

Artist Statement

Sublime: 

“Of such excellence, grandeur, or beauty as to inspire great admiration or awe”

(Oxford English Dictionary) 

This definition of the sublime is a perfect description for the rugged and beautiful awe-inspiring coastline of Big Sur California which has influenced and driven my creative process with oil painting.  My capstone exhibition is partly a journey through the emotions and imagination of my mind and my connection with the Big Sur coastline I grew up around.  My art is a representation of land and seascape compositions as well as memories of interior spaces that I used to live and spend time in.  I am also exploring the world of my dreams and the abstraction of reality with memories of my love for the Big Sur coastline.  When painting from my memories or dreams I try to evoke the emotions I felt being in the natural landscape through abstraction of colors and shapes, that at times, I intentionally want the viewer to get lost which in turn evokes their own emotions and ideas. My senior capstone exhibit is a series of 10 oil paintings that range from landscapes and seascapes to interior spaces and dreamscapes.  There are a variety of canvas sizes with the largest being 3x5 feet to the smallest being 12x14 inches.  I like to paint mainly using a palette knife which allows me to mix colors easily and blend them on the canvas.  I use this technique to create more abstract looking shapes and colors that give my paintings a sense of wonder and dream like quality. A good example of this would be to look at the paintings with the windows, and see the blending of multiple colors and thick textures that are very abstract yet hint conventional elements obstructed by reality. As I started developing my technique and style with a pallet knife, I started painting on larger canvases which allowed me to get into the creative energetic flow that comes out in the painting.   

While the Big Sur coastline has a big influence on my art, so do the master painters and art period styles I learned about from my art classes at Principia.  The most influential artistic styles have been impressionism, romanticism, and expressionism art movements.  These styles relate to my work in different ways with expressionism influencing the way I distort reality through color while expressing my inner feelings or ideas.  Romanticism influences my expression of the sublime in nature, the mood, and the power of my imagination reflecting on the nature of Big Sur.  More specifically artists like Van Gogh, Vlaminck, Dali, Rembrandt, Soutine, and Matisse.  I like to study their use of color, texture, composition, values, tones, the historical context, and their thoughts and ideas and their responses through art. For example, Van Gogh’s art focusing on expressing emotional and psychological responses to the world through bold colors and expressive, sometimes symbolic images. And also, Maurice de Vlaminck, who used bright expressive colors in a unconventional way that’s influential to my art.