Joshua Brown: capstone

2022 Fall.Colorado State University Art and Art History Department capstone project.Capstone contains the artist's statement, a list of works, and images of works.The artist's statement: Inspired by how a complex work's content is revealed through in-depth examination, I present my conceptual drawing through layers of meaning, hidden by subtle compositional and surface level details. Subjects convey a range of themes through these aspects of my work. One theme in my work is artistic struggle, represented by animals that best communicate the struggle focused on in a given work. For example, the presence of an elephant in the composition signals that the content is communicating a difficulty in drawing from memory. Other themes include the accurate and speculative portrayal of animals both living and extinct, and interactions between different animals and humans. Such ideas may take form as juxtapositions between scientifically accurate and older reconstructions of dinosaurs, or diptychs highlighting the shared toxicity of unrelated species. My conceptual drawing additionally pursues site specificity regarding rendering landscapes which hold personal or conceptual significance, and astronomical imagery. Most of the themes discussed here incorporate varying levels of storytelling into their presentation. My work explores and experiments with an alternating array of materials and techniques such as, colored pencil, pastels, ink, brush pens, oil paint, and paper cutting, layering, and texturing to maintain a diverse visual range. The use of these materials in any combination offers further opportunities for development and experimentation in my practice. They are also an integral part of my research process for making art, which employs the composition of brainstorm lists, exploring approaches to depicting a given theme, and producing thumbnail sketches, full-page sketches, and material studies. This process aids my visualization and understanding of an artwork’s plausible result before I apply the first mark