concentration statement

During the first semester of this year, I became infatuated with graffiti. But is wasn’t the large scale paintings that I fell in love with but the quick, stylish and dynamic marks of simple tags (artist signatures of sort written usually in permanent marker on anything from dumpsters to doorways). I worshipped the hours of practice and immense skill and style behind the split second marker slashes. I was also captivated by the character of each individual style, and began noticing the subtle differences in mark-making that separated one writer from another. All of these different styles, scrawled across the run-down walls of a living city tell me stories of decay, but also of renewal. It is as if the city’s exterior is peeling away to reveal the history beneath, told in the unique writing of its inhabitants. The basic premise for my concentration lies on the parallels between humans, our cities, and the ephemerality and history of both. By drawing a person as a conglomeration of graffiti, I hope to not only represent the person visually, but also to show the ever-changing history of that person. The evident chaotic process of the marks that make up the drawing parallels the underlying history that makes up every living person beneath their façade of appearance. To add another layer to this history of process, I have done the majority of my work on newspaper, or a newspaper text transfer onto paper. This background text creates another layer of text to parallel and contrast with the graffiti I write on top of it. I have explored this process by beginning with simple portraits in black marker and white-out on newspaper, and expanded to other media of acrylic paint with a limited color palate. From here I explored using finer lines to create more detail, a full color palate on a color-filled comic background, and even several full figure drawings. I have stretched myself by working in large sizes, learning to write graffiti, exploring the use of color in this style, and by attempting to convey motion through line in my break dancing full figure drawings.