The Life of a Art Student : STUCK: Formal vs. Conceptual

The past two years I’ve been in my own little art world working in a small corner of my room and I haven’t had to confront issues with my work head on. Ideas such as time, memory, history, and loss are the driving forces behind my work, however, I’m not sure if they necessarily show through. There are definitely better techniques to push my thoughts further; adding gesso over the charcoal automatically separates the viewer from the drawing. However, I’ve avoided these processes because I felt like they were an obvious solution and I wanted to challenge myself. However, I haven’t attempted to really resolve the obvious imagery in my work. I’ve drawn even more detailed drawings recently because the process lets me zone out, sometimes pouring my heart out on the page. So my biggest problem now is deciding what is more important to me, pushing my love of drawing or pushing these ideas in my work, or figuring out how I can do both.

The nature of time irks me on a daily basis. There is a sort of aching longing that occurs when grasping at something that was once tangible reality that has transformed into an intangible memory. I thought I was conveying this by allowing my drawings to fade into the paper, but it could easily be something that only makes sense to me, I just haven’t been in a critic in two years to find out if it makes sense to others. I want to push my old work while elevating these ideas in my new work.

In an art world that’s all about the ideas behind the art I’ve found myself wondering how my love of charcoal fits into that. Bottom line is I love to draw; no matter what I'm going through in life it's the thing that makes sense, makes everything make sense. Sometimes I just love a painting because of a mark of paint in it. I know that can be an idea in itself but how can we appreciate art in the way it used to traditionally be viewed while still being challenged by it's deeper meaning. I guess the point I’m trying to make is that art programs still require basic skill classes. If art is about the idea what is the purpose of these classes? Is it just to teach artists the skills needed to voice ideas? Sometimes I love walking through a figure drawing class simply to see how students look and see the figure and how it’s energy jumps off the page.

So that being said here’s what’s been going on in my studio. I finally got a long day in yesterday. The one drawing that’s sort of less representational is an old drawing I covered in gesso and went back into. I hated working on it but I can’t deny that it’s the most interesting drawing hanging up in my studio right now. Hopefully I'll get at least six hours in today... off to my studio I go!

So this reallyyy old drawing (that is completely off I realized this after looking at the photograph) became..

this..

and this became...

this..

I think I'm definitely going to cut that bottom off or resolve it better. I love chess imagery but I feel like people dismiss it because it's too "Alice in Wonderland" (which I loveee). I see it more as Victorian imagery which makes sense since it's what Alice in Wonderland comments on. I love the idea of these open expanses such as the gardens of Palace of Versailles. They were areas for people to walk, reflect but spaces that became sort of surreal; like these erie dream like expanses that can become creepy when left alone.