EMILY VAN ENGEL

Not a native French speaker, I often find myself in basic conversations when I throw out the line, “Parlèz-vous Français? Oui oui? Moi aussi.” Asking someone for their favorite color or where the library might be could turn into a fascinating conversation identifying colors within the room or a spoken tour of all the stores in a town.

Out to dinner with some friends the other night, a non-native English speaker asked me “what do you like about art?” I giggled out of shock — no one had asked me to justify my decision to return to school in what felt like such a direct way. I told him that I liked to make things and that I liked how art captures a moment in history and its styles or social struggles. Reflecting further, my final answer would be that it tells a story.

In my most recent painting, I was tasked with painting a white object with a white background. For the painting to work,  you need to differentiate between warm and cool tones. I painted a shirt hanging against a white wall, and I wanted to tell the story of the solitude of this article of clothing.

I am posting a picture of the props I used as well as of two pictures of the painting. Can you tell which one is the finished piece, and which one was a snapshot a few hours before I finished?

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 26th, 2010 at 5:21 pm and is filed under art. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.