I think there is something inherently beautiful in simple shapes. In simple shapes there is no obscuring the light and shadow. Nor any flashy tricks. There is only simple values and gradients surrounding their thresholds.
I captured a moment on a boat in France that struck me. Our captain was calm as he navigated the waters, his steady hand stretched back and guided the vessel with confidence. In the captain’s chair, his grandson sat absorbed in his phone, despite the surrounding beauty. This image made me contemplate: In this age of distraction, are we missing out on the life we have right in front of us? It seems that more value is placed on our engagement with videos, pictures, and ads than our engagement with reality. The most important decision we can make is how involved we want to be in our own lives.
“Life Imitates Art” depicts an unstaged moment in conversation in a dramatized and classically inspired style. The inspiration for this piece came from a trip I went on with my family. While sitting around a table, my cousins began to stack plastic tableware on their heads. The picture I took was meant to be a funny one, but although I laughed out loud at the look on his face, I knew I had to reframe the narrative of this image. This digital painting is the first in a series I’ve now started where I try to freeze the frame on our modern lives and contextualize these little moments into something that appears to fit within the realm of classical fine art despite the modern medium and unmodeled subjects.
After using oil paints for the first time, I realized the incredible potential that the medium has. Its ability to blend is unmatched, and its slow-to-dry nature allows for adjustments regardless of breaks between painting. That's when I decided to paint "fallen angel". I wanted to challenge myself to do a piece that was more detailed than anything I had ever done before. In addition, I wanted to create a piece that juxtaposes itself, having deeper meaning than what meets the eye. The angel, a mythologically divine being, is surrounded by blood that isn't his own, and his wings have been tainted by sin. What he has done, however, is up to the viewer, because I believe that in every piece of art it is the right of the onlooker to develop their own interpretation.
As autumn replaces summer, the night will continue to grow, and we will need to watch the dark more closely for those lurking.
The composition is an oil painting of a beloved cartoon character from the children’s TV show Adventure Time. The purpose of this painting is to draw connections between your inner child and who you are today. In modern society, we are expected to forget or abandon the things that once filled us with joy. But this piece invites you to remember the small things you once loved. You can still be an adult, but always remember what makes you, You!
This piece started as a simple hand study, but I ended up loving it so much that I decided to add some scenery to it. I’ve been trying to pin down a more surreal yet authentic style for a while now and I feel like I accomplished that in this work. One thing I really love in a work of art is something that seems like it shouldn’t work but, in the context of the art, fits perfectly. Blue and pink hands, green stars, and beige skies aren’t things that sound particularly appealing, but they work well together here. There’s a semblance of realism, but just enough non-realism that it makes you think a little harder and truly consider what you’re seeing.
This piece is something I’ve wanted to do for a while. The veil’s texture comes from some digital manipulation of the temperature anisotropy map of the cosmic microwave background (CMB). The CMB is one of the most important wells of knowledge in cosmology. From analysis of the CMB, cosmologists have studied dark matter, dark energy, and the age, shape, contents, and structure of the universe. The CMB came into existence ~380,000 years after the Big Bang. Prior to this, the universe was opaque to light. This means that none of our study of the first 380,000 years of the universe can rely on light, which does make things difficult. Reaching ‘through’ the CMB is a manifestation of the desire to understand the universe’s mysteries, even if the universe seems to want to protect its secrets.
Three years ago, the park near my childhood home began to undergo construction. The paths were the first to go—ripped up in order to make way for a new pavilion. Orange barriers began to sprout in the grass as the towering oak whose roots I used to dribble soccer balls around was cut down to clear the way for grassy fields. This digital painting is a rendition of one of the only photos I’ve ever taken of the park as it used to be. I don’t dislike what the park has become; the space has become more lively with visitors and children’s laughter than ever in recent years. However, visiting the park comes with a feeling of melancholy to its change. Nothing lasts forever, and even though it’s still a minute walk up the road, I can’t ever visit my childhood park again. It’s not disappeared but exists in my memory along with my countless memories of it.
I have always loved drawing and storytelling so I wanted to try and push myself with this illustration. I took a lot of inspiration from Todd Mcfarlane's "Spawn". More specifically the way in which he developed the character, using emotion and feeling as the base for the character, taking a more abstract approach. So I decided to use the same method in order to develop my own original piece. I then used some techniques I have been developing in my digital media Essentials class in order to construct the background and support the figures' presence as much as I could.
