Theme 2: Gaping

When I first found out the theme was GAPING, I Google-imaged it, which turned out to be a few seconds too long to be called just traumatizing. Don't do it.

The thing is, once I got my mind out of the gutter, GAPING can be interpreted in so many ways. I had images of faces consisting of just mouths and tongues, great gaping holes that we use to not only sustain ourselves physically but also to supplement ourselves emotionally, whether that be through verbal or nonverbal communication.

So that was what I had planned on doing, but it all sort of just changed. I went to the National Gallery of Art over the weekend for my Modern Art History class; we've been covering the Impressionists and the Post-Impressionists and so we were browsing through the Chester Dale Collection for some inspiration for a paper assignment. My professor gave us a tour and then she mentioned something Gauguin had said when observing a friend painting - "How do you see that tree? It's green? then choose the most beautiful green on your palette - And this shadow? It's more like blue? Do not be afraid to paint it with the purest blue possible." I think that really hit me when I actually sat down to try to interpret this theme.

And so instead of gaping mouths and whatnot rendered in black and white, I decided to go back to color. I ripped off the top of a take-out box (which once held my lunch from Cosi) and drew around the logo. I used a couple of reference photos for the poses, but the colors I made up, for the photos were black/white. I wanted not to use color arbitrarily but to use color as a means of defining shape and form instead of delineating the two with cross-hatching/etc. I tried to avoid pure black, because there really isn't any pure natural black in the world; rather, there are tones of black and shades of it. The whole experience reminds me of something an old art instructor told me -that there really isn't any line in the world either -just form, shape and shadow. It's the juxtaposition of two objects or an object with its shadow that may create the appearance or illusion of line, but the actual line does not exist; it is just suggested. It was sort of revelatory -that lines are just human constructs.

Concerning GAPING though, the logo becomes the gaping hole that the figure and the profiled head appear out of. The legs sprawled out below the logo are also 'gaping' in a way -they're bleeding from a hole in the center. I colored over some of the letters of the logo and so it now says "He is heart baked." That part is open to interpretation.

Anyways, below is what I have along with a zoomed in view of the first two figures. It's all prismacolor on cardboard.