Final MFA Body of Work Piece!!

Carnal Map #4
6.5' x 6.5'

I am happy to announce the completion of my final MFA body of work piece!  It's been an incredible journey that has completely changed the way I view my art, my life, and my past, and I know that it is only the beginning of something even greater.  I plan to have my final show and defense mid-March, location and time TBA, but I will be sure to let everyone know.  Also, if anyone has questions concerning the subject matter or my process, feel free to email me at raymond.penajr@gmail.com and I will be happy to explain!

Final Projects in My MFA Series

Some people may have seen my recent works in progress posted to Facebook and thought that I had gone a bit mad, just splashing seemingly random and muddy swashes of paint all over a giant canvas.  I know that most people have the reaction of "anyone can do this, when they see the giant mess I'm making.  But, I promise you, there is a method to my madness, and I'll do my best to describe my method and process to you.

Short summary of previous works:

My first series is based on capturing the physical imprints of my body upon a surface.  The images consist of my physical body in addition to marks and imprints that were unforeseen as a result of my working in the dark.  What this reveals is the underlying psychological process associated with the memories I have based the images off of, or more simply, the memory of my body unintentionally making itself known on the surface that speaks a clearer truth than my preconceived ideas.

My second series utilizes the methods I discovered in the first in that I use the intuition of my carnal memory to produce an image.  These paintings are different from the photograms in that the method is more deliberate than the unintentional recordings resulting from working in the darkroom.  In fact, I used my iPad to record a quick memory/intuition fueled sketch, that I then referenced as a intuitive compass as I worked in a much slower larger scale.

My final series will be two large scale paintings composed of multiple layers of tinted blacks.  For these pieces I am actually drawing inspiration from another artist's methods concerning a specific set of works: Mark Rothko's Rothko Chapel paintings.  These paintings are composed of many layers of uneven black washes that are different tints.  When you first look at them, you don't see much but black.  However, as your eyes adjust, you begin to see the layers of subtle colors that pull you into an infinite depth.  As Rothko put it, 

"bright colors sort of stop your vision at the canvas, where dark colors go beyond. And definitely you're looking at the beyond. You're looking at the infinite."

My works take the concept of creating a limitless space upon the canvas, but instead of applying the concepts of universality and infinity I fuel my expressions with intensely personal carnal mnemonic responses.  I perform each wash with an intuitive anchor, like the iPad sketches, only this time the anchor is musical.  I have been performing musically from as far back as I can remember.  Indeed my earliest childhood memories are performing singing and dance numbers on a stage for an audience.  That being so, music has embedded itself deep within my psyche, and nothing can recall the physical chemical responses associated with the memories of a period of my life like music can.  As soon as a song plays it's as if I step into a portal and relive those most potent memories of my life.  With this technique, each pass of color on the canvas becomes a physical marker of the memory within my body, building a map that displays not the response to an isolated moment or time period, but a window through which you can perceive a lifetime of experiences of joy, sorrow, love, hatred, envy, and every other hue of the emotional spectrum that paints my identity as a human being.

DAMAGE!!

So due to an error in mixing the plaster for the central portion, I lost a large chunk of the mid-right side.  I am very sad at this, but I also kind of like it.  Currently I'm struggling with the decision to repair it or not, since part of my concept is that I surrender control of these pieces upon completion, but it may take me a while to figure out what the correct answer is.

Dysmorphia

4'x6' (wax, salt, acrylic, powdered charcoal, plaster, plaster sculpting clay, playsand)

 

 

Today I completed my final piece for the semester, titled "Dysmorphia", in which I address specifically my struggles with body image, my diabetes, and gay culture.  My original plan was formulated in a previous post, but as you can see there have been some significant changes, all of which were discovered by accident.  There's a lot of talk about process here, but if you want to get straight to the meaning of this painting, you can skip to the blue section near the end :)

I began the way I normally do, looking at the intuition drawing to reorient myself on the emotional memories, and then letting my body intuitively express them on the canvas.  Next  I next began painting, using water to mix the paint with the charcoal, after which I began constructing the gash in the center with a mixture of plaster and (though I didn't intend this) plaster sculpting clay with I though was another carton of lightweight plaster and tossing around salt and powdered charcoal.  At this point I was feeling lost.  Everything seemed arbitrary and contrived and did not carry the emotional weight I had obtained in the intuition sketch.  So, I went to a crock pot in which I had been melting blocks of paraffin wax, and, since there were no handles to prevent me from burning my hands, i had use some oven mitts to lift out the pot.  Generally speaking, the pot was ceramic and therefore slippery, and this in addition to the lack of friction with the mitts its no surprise that I dropped it on the canvas and spilled wax across almost the entire surface.  Obviously, there was immediate horror, but these things do happen and I have learned to move with the situation.

So, I let everything cool down, meditated, and play with the new surface, discovering it was impossible to paint on but also froze everything underneath the wax which was awesome.  So I took it further, pouring on more wax, throwing n more charcoal, getting a knife and carving into the surface, spraying on a clear matte primer which allowed me to paint again, but what was this telling me?  I had done all these things to the surface but had not discovered anything.  But of course, this is when the revelation came.

When I first started dropping the charcoal, I had gotten a water bottle and sprayed water on to see if I could freeze the powder to surface with it without blowing it away.  Here I did the same thing, and unintentionally created pools of water that drifted across the surface, picking up particles of paint, wax, salt, and charcoal and depositing them in the cracks and crevices of the wax.  Unintentionally, I had discovered a way to reveal every mark and scar in the surface. 

How does his relate to dysmorphia?

Glad you asked!  I came to the realization that in this piece, the wax becomes my body, and every element that I added to alter the surface becomes a reflection of what I feel I need to change about myself.  These efforts destroy and alter the surface in ways that are mostly invisible to me, yet an unintentional element reveals the truth.  The water washes away the surface, picking up the superficial materials and redepositing them into the traumas that I have inflicted beneath the projections, forcing me to acknowledge not only the fact that they exist, but that I am accountable.  In many ways I do not see myself as I am, but only in terms of the environment in which I am placed.  This relative identification is corrosive because those elements are not inherent to my body, placed, instead, by the cultures of which I construct my identity.  The images of male models and masculinity are merely simulacrums of perfection, yet for me they have become reality and I am a deviation.  

You may wonder about the significance of the scar in the middle of the image.  Well, to me, the flaws in my appearance are the only things I see.  They become magnified to extreme proportions, though in reality they are mostly unnoticeable.  This scar is a side effect of my diabetes, called lipodystrophy (the deterioration of fat due to frequent insulin injections).  On my left thigh, I have developed a small dent where the fat has deteriorated, and though it's barely noticeable, I obsess over it enough that it is perfect for a representation of how I see myself.  

First Pass on a Final Piece for the Semester

As usual, exploring the effects of different orientations

close-ups of specific techniques of burial and excavation

So this painting is 4' x 8', and the scale is critical to the theoretical basis of my work this semester so the pictures really cannot do it much justice but I'll do my best to give an accurate depiction of what's going on here.

Staring at the huge blank canvas before me, it was incredibly difficult to make the first marks.  For whatever reason the sight of such a large area of pure possibility can be slightly paralyzing, and I have this fear that my influence will ruin that purity.  To help myself, I chose one of the intuition exercise to serve as a map for my emotional state:

Now I am not using this as a 1:1 sketch for an exact composition, but more of a guide to assist me in honing in on a particular emotional memory.  In doing these exercises, I am able to quickly sketch and express and remain true to emotional responses without the distractions of conscious mental processes.  However, working on a piece of this scale I am unable to maintain a continuous expression simply because I have to pause so often to prepare materials.  To remedy this, before I start throwing things on the canvas I stop and meditate on these sketched images to tune my intuition back into the region of memory response that I achieved during the sketch, and once I achieve that start letting my body create what it wants.  I literally use no constraints as to what artistic techniques I use: if I want to throw dirt and plans in with the paint I go outside and dig a hole and mash the dirt into the canvas.  If I want plaster to dig through I mix up some paint and plaster and glob it on and start digging through it, or if I want to cut through the surfaces I find the nearest object and started scratching and grinding away.  The process is incredibly liberating, and much like the photograms reveals much more than I ever could have consciously chosen to demonstrate.

As I worked on the piece, the meditations on my memories began to take the form of a mad scramble, as if I were digging to uncover something that I knew I needed though not knowing what it was  This is what it was like for me, especially in those first few years on my own as the strict rules that governed my younger years broke down and I built a new framework to live by.  This concept took root in my mind and I naturally began to look to earth and organic matter to form the surface upon which I literally dug through to uncover previous layers on the canvas.  I plan to continue to incorporate different materials over the next month to build mass on the surface and to further support the sense of history and discovery I am working towards.

More Intuition Drawings

Intuition #4

Intuition #3

These are a few more intuition paintings I did over the weekend in preparation for my final project proposal for my Contemporary Art Studio Seminar class.  In terms of Semiotic communication, these pieces are descriptors of my body in terms of Index, which is a physical symbol made by its signifier ( i.e. a fingerprint as representation of a finger).  Literally, my body is imprinted in the photogram leaving both an Iconic representation of my physical body as well as a physical Index.  These photograms are placed on top of layers of materials which become a representation of my intuitive interpretation of my identity within the time period I meditate on.  I am interested in examining the way my conceptual identity changes as I work on these pieces, for I find that I am constantly defining and redefining myself in memory.  How does this fluid self-interpretation relate to my current body and how do the materials I intuitively select to create the grounds of the painting redefine my present?  Connected by a similar thread, in what ways are these objects represented in proportion to one another related to my body, as in how are the materials and methods proportionally and methodically distorted by the misconceptions inherent in my thinking?  I know this is a lot of theoretical jargon, but it is necessary to understanding how my art relates to modern aesthetics, and I need to be able to discuss my work in these terms in order to communicate and more clearly understand where these images come from.  If anyone would like to know more about these Indexes and Icons of representation, you can refer to this Prezi I made on art in relation to Semiotics.

Intuition #3: Reaching for myself through fear, foundations of medical paraphernalia weaving, stitching, and creating structure for my body.  If you scratch away the surface, you can see the layers and layers of evidence of what my body requires to function, and what I must consume to live.  My skin becomes a focus here and an obsession, as it both covers the marks of my injection sites, builds as scar tissue, and deteriorates in ultimate lipodystrophy.

Intuition #4:  How do I measure the worth of my physical appearance?  How do the physical side effects of my diabetes magnify and distort the imperfections in my body and how do I show the looming fear of what will become of my body in the future?  How much of my life is defined by this fear and is it the underlying motive behind most day to day decisions I make, and is this intensified by the affects of gay culture where looks are regarded as wealth?

Intuition Experiments

Intuition #1

Intuition #2

    Here's a post about something different that I am trying.  In talking with my thesis advisers and examining my own intuition about what to do for my projects this semester, I've found myself moving away from photogramming that demonstrates specific moments of my past and more into imagery that examines my present interpretation of my previous experiences.

    When I completed my previous works, I had always had a specific plan in mind which was almost immediately debunked upon the completion of the piece.  It seems as if my work needs a more fluid and malleable interpretation that is not constructed from a rigid plan; in all honesty the art does not want to be concretely directed and instead wants to flow uninhibited from me and into the world.  There is always a battle which occurs within my head about what my MENTAL processes want the imagery to look like and what my BODY actually creates.  This can be quite distressing at times, and indeed I looked upon many of my works of last semester in utter despair before closer examination revealed a new lens through which I could view my past.  The ability of my mind to impede my body is not something which I feel will be productive in the macro perspective of my future, for I know myself well enough to  ultimately see frustration winning over my desire to create. 

    With this in mind, I have begun taking steps to exercise the surrender of my mind to my body and its intuitive nature, which has indeed proven to be difficult.  I feel that my works this semester want to be large, and while I entertain the romantic notions of an uninhibited pursuit of art I do have to remember that I'm a broke grad student with limited resources at hand.  This is where my handy iPad comes into play!  It allows me to draw, paint, and conceptualize prototypes without any fear of waste or irreversible mistakes.  The images I have posted are two intuition experiments that I have completed, where I physically engage in art and remove my mind from the process, working entirely by intuition and emotion.  I do have a few new themes that I keep way in the back of my mind to give my body a purpose, but I am working to minimize the extent to which the theme dictates the imagery.  I know I want to not recreate moments, but to illustrate how the moments felt without being too heavy handed with strict narration.  For example, in college I began to obsess over my body due to several factors, including the inevitable erosion of my body due to my diabetes and my superficial worth as an attractive homosexual man.  I don't want to say to people: my body is deteriorating and I suffer from dysmorphia, but rather: this is how my deterioration feels to me and this is how my physical obsession feels to me.  This is far more personal and moves away from the realm of the pedantic, which has been a constant struggle in the past.

    And so I look to methods of measuring my current emotional interpretation of my undergraduate development, which I'm positive will change as I work on my pieces and that I hope will remain evident in the final product.  You will see not an illustration of a single event, but evidence of a pursuit of discovery that is traceable throughout the surfaces of my art.  With what materials I will use to realize this I'm not entirely sure yet, but the question of which forces carved the deepest trenches in the construct of my personal development will provide the clues I need to decide.