Life on the Hudson, A Shad's-Eye View: MFA Thesis - Painting and Drawing
Subject
Research Subject Categories::HUMANITIES and RELIGION::Aesthetic subjects::Art; Painting Exhibitions; Drawing Exhibitions; Oil Painting; Hudson Valley; Hudson River; Shad; Sturgeon; Beacon Bridge; Human Figure; Entanglement; Expressionism; FigurativeAbstract
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.
The following license files are associated with this item:
Except where otherwise noted, this item's license is described as Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 United States