Black and White

This image was made by the artist Lucy McLauchlan. Her artwork catches my eye because of the way it is constructed; out of faces and bodies, but when it's put together it ends up looking like a tree. I like the style it was done in too, with the different lines and structures, and how the lines have varying thickness and strength. I also like how the bottom has a lot going on while the top is generally less crowded and it kind of just balances out. You get clustered by the bottom, then you look up and get to take a breath before going back to the bottom and so on...

Feeble Minded Children

Nikita Atrash

Feeble Minded Children

Emptiness, emphasized by a lack of anything. A background to show that while there is nothing there, something occupies that nothingness, whether it is immediately visible or not. A view of objects carefully placed on the emptiness to occupy the space, but to still show that there is nothing there. Simple objects that perhaps do not have an immediately evident link between them. Different objects to represent different aspects of a life, different methods of living in one’s own heaven or one’s own hell.

I am unsure what I believe heaven and hell are. To be blunt, their concept confuses me. I have thought many times about what they might be like; whether we all really go to heaven or we all really go to hell, whether they are a sort of comfort for when we move on, or whether they actually exist. Originally, I intended to confuse the person viewing my art about what heaven and hell was, and make them rethink their position on it. Then I realized that I was only confusing myself further than I already was on the concept.

I decided to use concepts rather than actual images to represent what I believed my own heaven and hell were. I used the same background on all of my images to represent a sense of emptiness and monotony, something that, while every day of my life is different, I feel like is in my everyday life. I often find myself responding to questions of how my day was with ‘Eh, nothing special’ or people asking if I’ve been up to anything with a ‘Not much’. The images themselves represent different aspects of my life, but each has an underlying theme that goes along with the others. Sometimes it is more evident than the others, though - The theme of loneliness is more evident in the image with the girl than in the image with the hat, for instance, but it is still there.

Overall, I did not want my images to have an immediately evident meaning. Instead, I wanted people to look at them and think about them - make them wonder what they were supposed to think about them. I feel like using concepts instead of solidified things achieved that effect, and I believe I sorted out my own curiosity about heaven and hell in the process.

So, Setting Up...

I suppose this is the blog I'll be using for my art class. I am unsure what I'll be posting here, so in the meantime, I'll have this introductory post up.

Why 'Red Bandanna'?
Red Bandanna comes from the bandanna that I've been wearing to school. I've been attempting to wear it in a different way every day, and hope to keep doing so throughout the year. We'll see if I manage to pull that off. I suppose you could call it a 'trademark' - and I might try to work it into my art, too.

What to expect?
I'm unsure right now. We'll see as time carries on.