Date of Graduation

5-2022

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Fine Arts in Art (MFA)

Degree Level

Graduate

Department

Art

Advisor/Mentor

Sam King

Committee Member

David Andree

Second Committee Member

Abra Levenson

Third Committee Member

Neil Callander

Fourth Committee Member

Kara Andree

Keywords

Abstract, Neurodiversity, Painting, Sensorial Environment, Sensorial Experiences, Slow Art

Abstract

As the Sun Yellows the Green of the Maple Tree is a body of paintings investigating communication, improvisation, play, and painting’s capacity for transformation.

Reflecting on my childhood spent with my brother, Austin, who experiences sensory differences due to autism, I establish a painted space that is both forcibly disjointed and meaningfully connected, invoking the uncertainty and complexity of perception and communication. Through chromatic nuance, physicality, representational ambiguity, and visual tempo, I invite the viewer into the act of slow looking—to encounter each work as a living, breathing, individual entity.

In the studio, I invent rules and aleatoric devices, mimicking an engagement with board games or puzzles, and pursue a jazz-like improvisation within these restrictions. The result is an open, scrambled experience of space, like a jigsaw puzzle built from pieces sourced from multiple boxes. Spatial relationships and potential meanings seem to shift with every glance, suggestive of my own experiences reading imaginative and poetic writers like Haruki Murakami and Italo Calvino.

Provisional grids support tessellating blocks of color to create relationships of alternating friction and calm. I sew scraps of work together in a lyrical rhythm reminiscent of quilting, invoking logics of multiplicity and interconnectivity. Josef Albers observed that color behaves like a human “in two distinct ways: the first in self-realization and then in the realization of relationships with others.”

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