The experience helped me understand how to use oil paint properly. Previously, I was using excessive amounts of linseed oil and did not understand how to use solvents. I didn't even know that solvents could be mixed with oils. Developing a better understanding of oil paint use has been a real game changer. I also gained a much greater appreciation for underpainting, which I had previously avoided due to lack of understanding the benefit. Throughout all of the portraits, I frequently referenced the Asaro head. Thinking about the face in terms of planes has helped me better understand facial structure, light, and form.
It was also nice to just experience being a student again, albeit with a much different lens.
Beyond technical growth, one of the most significant things this course has given me is a new set of questions to wrestle with: why painting? Why representational work? Why human-centric work? I am always a proponent of developing more technical skill, but when I am left to my own devices, these questions keep churning around in my brain. For me, the medium tends to serve the concept rather than the other way around. I love the process of painting, and it's definitely the visual language I'm most fluent in, but I do want to interrogate why painting is necessary or relevant for me, personally. It's helpful to not lose sight of the fact that despite whatever grandiose sense of meaning we assign to the action of painting, at the end of the day, we're just smearing around pigments on a surface. Anyway, here are some of my projects:
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Resting. Acrylic on Craft Foam. This series features self-performed “resting” faces of school employees. While photographing my colleagues for this project, I noticed that some struggled to fully relax their expressions and let go of the performative smile often expected in care-facing professions. This observation became central to the concept and technical direction of this project. The portraits are painted on craft foam, a material commonly associated with children’s artwork and classroom activities. I intentionally chose this unstable and non-archival surface to reflect the instability of public education. The softness and fragility of the material also created technical considerations while painting, prompting me to shift from working with oil to working with acrylic. Two of the portraits are bordered with scalloped classroom-style borders featuring repeated smiley faces attached with visible staples. These materials reference the visual culture of elementary classrooms while also pointing toward the emotional performance expected of educators. Teaching, particularly elementary teaching, requires a constant projection of warmth, patience, and emotional accessibility. Because education is also a female-dominated profession, these expectations overlap with broader social expectations placed on women to appear pleasant and accommodating. Through this series, I wanted to explore the tension between authentic emotional states and socially performed expressions, as well as how differently male and female “resting” faces are often interpreted. Neutral expressions on women are often perceived more negatively than similar expressions on men.
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| Simplified 1.5 hour studies - Ryan |
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| Two alla prima self-portraits in oil. The first is on Masonite panel, the second on Dibond panel. I really had to contend with my own face while doing these. I definitely got tired of looking at it. |
