Topic of Choice #2: Art and Awareness

This semester I have been more heavily aware of the nature around me than I ever have in my life. As an art major one of the requirements as a senior is to take a senior seminar course that focuses on creating your own art. So for me this semester there has been a huge emphasis on art in both creating and observing. I have learned more to be aware of my surroundings and what is right in front of me through painting. I have learned to actually see a person an object or landscape not just to briefly look. I especially noticed how much more aware I was about my natural surroundings during my bike rides to and from school. I could feel my heart opening up to the natural world around me. By being fully immersed in my present surroundings. I became more aware of each tree I passed and the colors each one was producing during this autumn season. In my thoughts I started listing off the different shades of colors I would see in the trees around me. Overall as a painter I have learned to be more aware of color and how to create light and shadow through observation. I became even more intensely aware by being in nature and having those experiences permeate into my art. Such as the movement and color of water. Which is a main content of focus for my senior thesis which is about the healing and transformative symbolic power represented through water. By being out in the water and interacting with it in nature I have been able to become more aware of its presence and symbolic nature. I have come to see how much more I can communicate the beauty and power of nature by interacting with it through observation and action. Here below are some paintings I have been doing during my senior seminar for studio art. All inspired by the beauty, mystery and transformative reflection of water's symbolism.
"Living Water"
Oil painting on canvas
2017 


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