After spending a semester abroad in Rome, I am back in Maine for the summer. I have a Rusack Coastal Studies Fellowship through which I am working on an art project I proposed involving artistic portrayals of the coast. As many of you realized from my abroad blog, blogging regularly is not exactly my forte, but considering this is potentially the only time in my life I'll get to spend all my time and energy focused on one art project, I want to make sure to keep a concrete record of the process. I am doing this for my own benefit and because I want to be able to share this project with all of you. Sometimes it's hard to explain what exactly I'm working on in a short, passing conversation or without visuals so this summer's posts (on what used to by my photography class blog) will hopefully fill in the blanks. To start out with, below is a somewhat modified version of my project proposal explaining my plan for the project as it stands now, the evening before my first day of work.
Light and Water as Both Subject and Medium in Portraying Maine’s Coast
Works of art portraying the coast of Maine inevitably fall into the context of a long-standing tradition of Maine seascapes. From early on, artists sought out Maine’s then sparsely populated coast as a summer refuge. Soon, however, summering and painting in Maine became the new vogue, drawing artists from Winslow Homer to Edward Hopper to the many artists working in Brunswick today, eager to tackle the coast as their subject matter. Because of this, it can be easy to view the subject of Maine’s coast as overdone or trite, but at the same time there is something irresistible about it. The coast of Maine is a unique place in itself and each encounter with it is different from the next. I have found that the coast exudes a certain powerful sense of place, through its specific atmosphere and aesthetic, which I strive to be able to capture through my project.
Two of the most significant forces at play on the coast, that frame and enliven the environment, are light and water. They are constantly shifting, affecting their surroundings and interacting with each other in various ways based on the time of day, the weather, and the time of year. In this project, I hope to observe, discover and depict how these key but ever-changing elements shape the coastal environment as well as the people interacting with it. I propose to do so by exploring light and water as both the subjects of my art and as parts of the artistic process of portraying them. To do so I will combine the photographic process of “cyanotyping” with watercolor painting.
Cyanotypes are photographs made through an early, alternative photographic process in which the artist uses natural light and water to develop photographs. The result is a white image on a deep blue background, as opposed to the typical film photography developing process that produces black and white images. Using the sun and water to create prints allows for the elements that shape the coast to directly shape the art as well. I will experiment with this process using both digitally enlarged negatives of photographs I take and the photogram technique in which the sun makes a direct impression of objects or environmental specimens placed on photosensitive paper. This will allow my representations of the coast to range from entirely representational to more abstract. I got a chance to experiment a bit with cyanotypes in Mike Kolster’s Photography and Color class in the Fall 2010 semester, but barely scratched the surface of possibilities that the process allows. That project piqued my curiosity to explore the process more.
In addition, I am interested in adding another dimension to my portrayals of the coast by combining or enhancing them with watercolors. The use of water in watercolor painting lends a certain level of fluidity and consequently expressiveness to the medium. I am not interested in simply coloring cyanotypes with watercolor pigments, but instead combining the two art forms in ways that allow for flexible and expressive representations of the subject matter, depending on which medium seems fit for which aspects of the environment. I intend to explore how I can make water and light play off each other in my works as they do on the coast in various ways. I hope that by focusing on these two major forces working on the coast as key parts of the art and the process, I can capture both a sense of the ephemeral qualities of these forces and of the real, physical presence of these elements that create such a unique environment.
I will begin the project by experimenting with the effects I can get with each medium and will then explore ways to combine the two to enhance the works. Through such trial and error, discovery of what approaches work best, and regular consultations and with my faculty mentor, I will develop a more solid plan for the final body of work. I intend to explore a variety of different coastal areas in Maine in addition to the Coastal Studies Center. I will explore a series of coastal harbors and towns, specifically including Rutherford Island, a small fishing island I know well, that hosts both summer residents and year-round lobstermen, where three bodies of water, the ocean, a cove and the Damariscotta River, all come together.
I am intrigued by the possibilities this project affords for me to combine my interests in photography and painting. I have always considered myself a painter, first and foremost, but my coursework has led me to explore photography further than I expected it would. The two media inform and complement each other, but also allow for different types of interpretations and portrayals. As I delve further into each process, I sometimes find it difficult to keep my photographic and painterly sensibilities separate. I am excited to attempt to reconcile the two and let them bleed together in a way that suits the subject matter, an environment that carries such a visual and emotional impact for me.
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