Senior Thesis
Building a Ghost
"I wish I could sing to you, until you fall asleep"
"I should go but I need to hold you first"
Painting of a landscape scene with water, trees, and rolling hills seen through a torn piece of fabric or paper.
Torn pieces of paper with watercolor paintings, including a bridge over a river, on a dark background.
Close-up of a textured, fabric-like art piece resembling a wrinkled, painted cloth, with darkened edges, mounted on a dark green wall.
A leaf with a painted or printed image of a bridge and trees on it, placed on a dark surface.
Torn paper with landscape painting of trees and a water body
A wall art piece resembling a starfish, crafted from textured, worn fabric with a dark, earthy color palette, mounted on a muted green wall.
Colorful artwork painted on a torn piece of dark-colored material resembling a leaf.
Fragments of torn painted canvas with landscape scenes, suspended against a dark background.
Close-up of a bat wing on a green background, showing the wing's texture and coloration.
An art gallery exhibit featuring painted artworks and hanging fabric or paper pieces on dark green walls, with light coming from a skylight.
Wall display of multiple sketches and paintings, including portraits and landscape scenes, arranged in a loose symmetrical pattern.
Project Statement
This project involves drawing loved ones and landscapes in plein air and translating them into paintings. I join these figures and landscapes, and the figures become apparitions.
The ghosts do not represent the deceased, but rather are a challenge to the philosophy coined by Arthur Schopenhauer called “The Hedgehog's Dilemma”, which is a metaphor about the challenges of human intimacy. Schopenhauer defines this philosophy, “A number of porcupines huddled together for warmth on a cold day in winter; but, as they began to prick one another with their quills, they were obliged to disperse. However the cold drove them together again, when just the same thing happened. At last, after many turns of huddling and dispersing, they discovered that they would be best off by remaining at a little distance from one another. In the same way the need of society drives the human porcupines together, only to be mutually repelled by the many prickly and disagreeable qualities of their nature.” (Schopenhauer, Parerga and Paralipomena, p.584)
My ghost is an attempt to bring myself and others into one transcendental body, conjoined in body and soul. Within this abstracted existence, myself and others live and feel each other's experiences and emotions, therefore complimenting and understanding one anothers insecurities.
Each fragment painting represents a place I have been and drawn. I draw these places from life. I draw outside when the space feels welcoming and serene. Further, I take these sketches and paint them onto a piece of stretched and gessoed fabric. The fabric comes from my own wardrobe. The landscapes go through a visual game of telephone. Each layer of separation from the place means a depiction further from reality, and closer to my subconscious idea of the space. These landscapes are a blueprint for the ghost to understand my mind through the way I see the world around me.