Reading the Landscape

Date

2022-05

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Abstract

Surface is a topsoil, an epidermal layer inviting us to wonder what is beneath and what came before. Likewise, painting is what we read on the outermost layer, an exterior where we pause to consider the residue of the brush stroke. For me, nature and landscape are another surface of my reality, past, and perception of home. However, home like much history embedded in the earth, is nuanced, complex, and even dark - no matter how beautiful on the outside. Within my work I question my own and perhaps our shared “romantic” gaze on the landscape. By leaning into the absorbent and porous alchemy of plaster, I physically submerge personal photos and imprint my mark making to conceptually wrestle with this longing for the nature of home - a landscape that I am deeply connected to but also feel a strange amount of resistance towards. Through my misuse of materials and attempts to capture the landscape, I speak to the history of both painting and photography. In the challenge to hold these various truths or feelings toward a single place all at once, I find the poetry in between the lines and language of nature. I embrace the lessons and stories we could learn from the nonhuman and effortless giving of the land I have witnessed in my upbringing and artistic practice.

Description

Thesis completed in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Master of Fine Arts degree in the School of Art and Design at the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University, Alfred, NY.

Keywords

MFA thesis, Installations (Art), Plaster craft, Country life in art

Citation

DOI