Professional Practices Final Portfolio

There is a bittersweet beauty in the nature of average everyday life and simply existing with those around you. I use this mindset to explore my own past and present growing experiences in a tight knit, conservative southern region of the United States, I create artworks that help me better understand my relationship with myself and the individuals that surround me. By forming connections between my personal life and my relationships, my artwork has allowed me to explore where I physically exist in the world and who I am as an individual. My artwork embodies the specific experiences and external influences that have gotten me into the position I am in today. In my artwork I tend to use subject matter that pertains to my personal life and experiences. By using symbolic objects and environments that are directly connected to, or sometimes suggestive of southern culture, I hope to convey the sense of confusion, containment, and bitter-sweetness that a person can experience whilst living in such a place. When using these themes of confusion I create drawings that are fragmented with reality. I will place figures into an environment and merge them into abstracted environments that exist upon contrasting linear planes and don’t necessarily make sense. A rule that I like to follow as a human being is that not everything needs to make complete and total sense. In terms of medium, my go to is graphite and watercolor. As I’ve mentioned before, there is beauty in simplicity and I feel that graphite speaks eloquently for my work. My main goal with my artwork is to maintain an introspective artistic lifestyle, as I feel in order to mentally develop, one must unlock the next level of understanding themselves.https://digitalcommons.murraystate.edu/art399/1072/thumbnail.jp