Serial Working: Proposal

Serial Working: Proposal

          Artist: Friedrich Kunath

          Style: Kunath has a very naturalistic style when it comes to figures and landscapes, but often mixes the two to create almost surrealist imagery. He also uses different aspects in his works, such as sheet music or architectural design in his mixed media works. Typically, he uses a combination of acrylic ink, sometimes adding in oil paints or pencil.

          Content: Many of Kunath's paintings deal with love or a lack thereof, such as his works Gee, It's Nice to Be Alone, A Brief History of Love, and I may not be 100% happy but at least I'm not with you. His paintings often touch on ideas of loving another, loving oneself, or the concept of a happy couple. His use of color is vibrant, typically opting for colors that mimic the sunset, which give the paintings a heavy, almost dark feeling.

          Personal Appeal: I am drawn to Kunath's work for a number of reasons. On a purely arbitrary level, I like the colors of sunsets and am naturally attracted to them, and I also have always enjoyed naturalistic landscapes with lots of detail and deep greens. For the purposes of this project, I enjoy his work because I feel like it is something I would be able to mimic somewhat. I have always attempted to keep a relatively naturalistic style in my drawing, and I primarily enjoy drawing figures. So, although the landscape portion of his style will provide a challenge, I wanted to make sure I chose an artist who's style I identified with and could see myself in. Of course, I also enjoy his themes and the ways he goes about presenting them. His paintings focusing on love have a darkness to them that suggests a history of brokenness. For example, A Brief History of Love features a canvas painted yellow with dark brown splatters, with the word "LOVE" spelled out haphazardly and almost deformed. That, combined with the title, suggests Kunath's history with love is a rocky, splattered, broken one.

          My Idea: I intend to use Kunath's style and themes to express imagery about my childhood. I have a deep, personal connection with specific places in the woods behind my house. When I was much younger, my siblings and I would frequent these locations and play games nearly every day. The paths in the woods were clearly defined from the numerous times we tread them. But now the trails are barely visible. There came a point in my life where my siblings and I stopped going outside. We stopped playing in the woods, and because of that, the woods became less kid-friendly. When we were young, there was little overgrowth in our more frequented locations because we spent so much time there. Now, however, these places are overgrown with weeds and vines, thorns and poison ivy, and spiderwebs and ticks. I feel as if there is a parallel between my experience with the woods, which represent my childhood and the process of growing up and outgrowing childish habits, with Kunath's imagery of love. There is a distinct distaste for love, and yet an ever-present respect for it, almost a need for its idea, but not the thing itself. For my drawings, I hope to create images of different places in the woods, and a progression of growing out of them. I'm toying with the idea of adding figures of children playing or whether or not to make the locations overgrown, or a combination of the two. But, ideally, I would like to make one of "The Place", "Clay Falls", "The Deck", and "The Airplane Tree", which were the names of our most frequented wilderness playgrounds, for a total of 4 drawings. Hopefully.


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