Life on the Hudson, A Shad's-Eye View: MFA Thesis - Painting and Drawing

Abstract

The four canvases in the thesis exhibition interweave my notions of river life and human consciousness. They demonstrate a love for oil painting and the history of art while calling into question aesthetic conventions and conceptual assumptions regarding the divisions between nature and culture. I employ images of the Beacon Bridge, a rowboat, ancient Greco-Roman sculpture, river deities, swimming human forms, shad, sturgeon, and pigeons. Brought together, they carry the viewer from the river’s bottom (where sturgeon dwell), up the bridge’s piling, pier, and trussing. Transitions between the fish realm underwater and human realm on land are fluid. History, memory, fantasy, and projections of the future comingle in a mash-up of ancient, archetypal obsessions and urgent contemporary concerns.