CarrieBell_Art399Portfolio
Artist Statement
Art has a remarkable ability to connect with people on personal levels, allowing people to reflect on their own experiences and emotions. By exploring concepts of neighborhood life and home as an extension of nature, I am able to create visually relatable works using different materials and colors to convey familiar feelings.
To explore these themes, I utilize nature as a recourse. Taking walks and people watching has helped me create compositions that evoke melancholy emotions. Works such as, Clothesline of Memories, is an example of my exploration in home as nature. In this image, An elderly man is presented as drying out letters on a clothesline outside his window. The window lays on a faint gradient blue and green egg/oval-like shape. The mix of faint warm and cool colors adds a cloudy and emotionally evoking element. The variety of line weight throughout the image allows for an illustrated look without clusters of confusion.
Neighborhood Quilt builds off these same themes. Focusing on architecture through an at-home item and allowing for geometric exploration through the Victorian styled patch work. The position of the screen printed windows, moves eyes through the different bodies of the fabric. The mix of warm and cool colors as well as the various patterns builds apron the imagery and allows for angular directions within the quilt.