My process was sort of a mess in the beginning. I didn’t really know what I wanted to do for a capstone project, and I didn’t want it to be something that wasn’t meaningful to me. As I took Corby’s art class for the first time last fall, I was just beginning to work with oil paints. I had done some landscapes before with oil, but nothing very extensive. Over the course of my project, my knowledge of oil paints has improved immensely. I used to get really frustrated with mixing colors and finding shadow shapes, but I can now do both with much more ease. Corby always says that the palette is the biggest indicator of a painting's quality. If the palette isn’t of quality, the painting definitely won’t be. My palette used to be much more reserved and monotone. I never really looked at life with the eyes of an artist until I started focusing on where highlights had certain colors and what undertones different people have. It’s hard to paint what you see until you stop focusing on what you think you see. Even in doing a charcoal portrait of Yamni in class, I realized just how much my skills of portraiture have grown in the past year. My proportions are much better, and my ability to focus on shadow shapes and general appearances before looking at detail is much better. Because of this, I find my portraits have a much more realistic feel to them, and I can say that a lot of people came into the studio and asked if that portrait was of Yamni. As an artist, the biggest compliment you can receive is somebody knowing exactly what you are making before you tell them. It’s very satisfying to look at a drawing and think it looks like what you are trying to draw.
RBG’s painting really wasn’t anything other than me trying to pay tribute to a hero of mine to start. After she passed away I saw how much attention she was getting in the news, and I was learning so many things about her that I didn’t know before. That planted the seed in my brain about how many other women there were that had inspiring stories that I didn’t know about because they hadn’t died yet. I also was thinking about all the other times I didn’t learn about somebody’s story until they passed away. As I thought more and more about this phenomenon, I became increasingly perturbed with my lack of knowledge. I decided I needed to do more portraits. Then I decided that I needed to make more portraits of women. At first I wanted to do like 20 portraits, and that obviously didn’t happen.
A lot of factors went into why I didn’t get as many done as I would have liked to. COVID added another factor that I wasn’t prepared for, and I spent a lot of time at home that I hadn’t planned on doing. The 6 week break after Thanksgiving was really hard. I had my own supplies at home, but it was really hard to find the motivation to get down to my basement every day. It was really isolating to be alone in my studio for hours at a time working on the same painting. While it was great to have so much time, I learned how much I love having an environment like Slocumb where I can have people around me but still be doing my own thing. The process became frustrating and unenjoyable for me. My progress was stalling, and I didn’t know how to get going again. Spending hours on the computer for class took a toll on my mental health, and I wanted to get out of this rut I was in.
Coming back to school definitely made a difference, but then I got quarantined. I also wasn’t able to spend study hall in the studio like I had previously planned on doing. My time in the studio was limited to open studio time and class time. It was hard having short classes because you have to allow ten minutes at least on either end of class for set up and cleaning. In 45 minute classes, this meant you got maybe 20 minutes to actually paint. That paired with the fact that there was no way for me to get into the studio on my own time was really hard to make significant progress. I work best when I have time and I am not rushing to get stuff done, which makes it really hard for me to work in a short amount of time. If I am stressed about not getting the work done, that makes it so much harder to actually get the work done.
The spring semester was difficult because I spent the first two weeks at home recovering from knee surgery, and then after that I was working on my installation for the most part. The installation was a great break for me from the portraits, and I think that made the difference in keeping me motivated. Although it took time away from the portraits, it allowed me to grow as an artist in a different way, and gave me a new perspective on creating. A lot of people doing academic concentrations use the summer time to get a lot of work done on their capstone, but that wasn’t an option for me. My summer job was working at a sleep away camp, and my time off was extremely limited. The possibility of me being able to get substantial amounts of work done was non-existent.
When I came back to school in the fall, I wanted to get 10 portraits and 5 songs done. I quickly realized that my time away from the portraits allowed me to see them in a different light, and that they weren’t quite in a place where I was proud of them yet I am super appreciative of the longer classes this year because I can be working for a lot longer and get into a better rhythm than with the short classes. I decided to focus on making sure that my portraits were quality and something that I was happy with instead of making more portraits. So instead of starting anymore, I reworked my old ones using my new understanding of color theory and portraiture. Each of my portraits are on canvases that I stretched myself over wood frames I built with Corby. A big part of last fall was learning how to build a quality canvas that would last a long time. It's really important to make sure that the measurements you take are accurate so that the canvases can all be the same size. RBG wasn’t originally on a canvas to begin with, so I made a frame and stretched the canvas over it after she was fully dry.
Recording songs can be a very draining process. You first need to make a track, then redo everything until you get a take you are happy with. In my case, I am never happy with takes. Thankfully, I had Bill to help me with making tracks and recording. I learned a lot about the process of recording during my sophomore spring, and I definitely appreciate it a lot more now. I spent probably over 30 hours on making a cover of a song, and I could still work on it more. I have also been a bit sick during the recording process so it was even harder to have takes that I liked. I also decided that I would just focus just on two songs instead of three so that I could get more quality recordings.
Something I learned about myself throughout the process of this concentration is that I very rarely think I am done. Every portrait I wanted to perfect, and I could still go back and make more adjustments. When it comes to recording songs, I definitely have a hard time walking away from something I know could sound better. It's been a big challenge for me to be able to finish works and be proud of them when I have the urge to keep working on them and make them better. I have also researched each woman and given reasons as to why they inspire me.
I definitely put the pressure on myself to get this project done all in the fall term while doing college applications. If I were to give advice to kids doing the concentration program I would say to make sure you carve out time to do the work. I focused on my college apps first because that deadline was sooner, and the two weeks after that have definitely been crunch time. Now I understand that my circumstance is a rare one, and that most other seniors would have at least another term than I have to finish everything. The amount of work is doable, and it's important not to procrastinate. Doing 30 minutes a day of work is a great way to make sure that you are staying on track and helps keep the stress at a manageable level.
This project has helped me to be better at being proud of the things I accomplish even when I think there is more to be done. In the future, I think I need to lower my expectations for myself and be a little more lenient with myself. I have a slow processing speed, but really high executive functioning abilities. Basically, this means that I can be very productive and accomplish a lot, but that it might take me three times as long as other people. That paired with my ADHD makes it super easy for me to hyper-focus on details and perfecting the little things. My biggest problem is the amount of pressure that I put on myself to exceed my own expectations, and I don't necessarily give myself grace when that doesn't happen. This project has been a great challenge for me to push past being perfect and allowing myself to get done what I can and be proud of the fact that I did it.