Transcending the Surface
Date
2023-09-27
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
ORCID
0009-0006-4778-6014
Type
Thesis
Degree Level
Masters
Abstract
Through a collaborative process with the natural world, and by demonstrating how bodily knowledge and intuition can be used as praxis, the research presented in Transcending the Surface offers alternative and unconventional ways to participate in painting, pushing the boundaries of the medium from a Western modernist historical perspective. The imbalance of gender representation in museums and collections perceived to be historical is active and ongoing. Through my physical engagement with the world, I have come to understand myself as a being of nature, one who is not separate from the universe, but who is fully implicated within it. Not only does this embodied understanding of materiality make up the conceptual subject matter of my artwork, but it is also what motivates me to pursue artistic practice. This acknowledgment of our universal entanglement challenges the separation of the mind from the body, the dichotomies of logic and emotion, and of rationality and intuition. In my artistic research, I reclaim and re-present the characterization that has historically been used to delegitimize women’s artwork, that is women’s bodily nature. Through my personal practices of coming to know the physical world through my body and senses, I express through my artwork a form a knowledge that both works in tandem with historical painting processes and refuses the separation of the mind from the body in a way of demonstrating their reliance on one another.
Description
Keywords
painting, sculptural experiments, photography, abstraction, representation, nature, trees, water, four elements, materiality, intuition, bodily knowledge, feminist art theory
Citation
Degree
Master of Fine Arts (M.F.A.)
Department
Art and Art History
Program
Studio Art