Artist Statement
Van Gogh Chair:
I was instantly drawn the Van Gogh’s painting because of its simplicity, monotone colors, and simply the fact that it reminded me of the chair at my kitchen table. The painting is very simple and almost entirely composed of a chair placed as the center piece with very little else. I originally wanted to recreate the image because I assumed it would be very simple. I had the chair and that was about all there was to it. I managed to shoot and Photoshop a version that was a pretty decent representation of the piece; however, I was less than satisfied with the result. I apparently thought that I could turn a boring piece of famous work into a breathtaking representative without much of an effort. In order to make more of a statement with my final project, I decided to research more about the image.
Van Gogh painted his chair in a set. The chair that looked like the one sitting in my kitchen happened to represent him, while the other chair in the set represented his colleague, Paul Gauguin. The difference between the two chairs was as different as night and day, literally; with Van Gogh’s chair representing day and Gauguin representing night. The two were going through some conflict and the end of their relationship was near. Van Gogh was making a statement about how the relationship was causing tension between the two and consequently effecting Van Gogh’s work.
With all that in my brain, I continued to stare at the chair, and I must admit; I was rather bored. It was still just a chair. From my boredom, I came across the idea to represent in a boringly yet striking way, something that in a professional artist setting, bores me almost to the point of anger, which happens to be clichés.
I am studying visual communications and I greatly appreciate good design and innovative thinking; however, I am very quick to comment on pieces of work that appear to have been done before. For example, if you are designing a piece about critical thinking, find something other than a light bulb to express your concept. In the same way, when talking about creativity, all creative inspiration is completely lost with the phrase “think outside the box.” It is the most uncreative way to describe creativity, while being redundant and having a lack of ingenuity.
For that reason, I decided to represent the boring painting by Van Gogh by describing my distaste for the uses of clichés as an effective creative solution. To do this, I photographed a box where I wrote “Think” on the outside of the box and replaced the pipe and tobacco in Van Gogh’s original painting with the box. I still included the pipe in the form of a box of modern day cigars because I think it adds to the overall composition while relating back to the original painting. I included the use of my kitchen chair, because that is what attracted me to the painting in the first place and placed the whole scene inside of a very non-descript and bland stairway. I am very happy with the success of the piece because the overall composition is still rather boring at first glance, but the box with the word “think” is simple enough to fit the Van Gogh style, yet forces the viewer to take a closer look at the meaning behind the piece.
Artist Statement
MC Escher: Relativity
Drawing has always been a passion in my life and was the main influence on my decision to study Visual Communications, and Escher has always been one of my favorite artists. I have always loved the mathematical and visually confusing and thought provoking images that he was able to create. His work always deals with perspective while questioning general life concepts, and his work Relativity is no different. All the plains intersect and the stair cases connect different perspectives in ways that make it feel natural at first glance, but the most the viewer tries to understand the image, the more confusing it becomes.
Ideally I would be able to recreate the whole scene perfects, but that proved to be more difficult than I have the ability to create considering my Photoshop and photographing skills. I committed to capturing the essence of the drawing instead of doing an exact replication. I spend a lot of time with the different effects and had some staircases warped and bent while others were straight. Escher’s piece is done entirely by playing with the perspective of the stairs and the viewpoint that it is created at, so the warped stairs did not seem to fit. I then continued to play with perspective and reached a solution that in a way made the stairs seem like as endless loop. Each staircase led to the other, but they were not connected in any way. I also added the block like figures which are present in Escher’s piece.
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