Family to FeministMedium: Acrylic on canvas
Size: 1 ft x 2 ft Date: February, 2019 Exhibition Text: My piece is intended to tell the story of the sport of wrestling in my family. The first canvas is a portrait of my late Uncle Leng who was Rufus King's star wrestler during his high school years, the second canvas is a portrait of my father who was also one of his school's greatest wrestlers, and the final canvas is a portrait of myself as a current high school wrestler. I wanted to portray the reasons for my interest in the sport now, which is my family. I also intended for this piece to take a stance for feminism, as I am the only female wrestler in my family's history and one of the first female wrestlers in the history of Ronald Reagan High School. I especially wanted to bring attention to this as the school's female rates are dramatically increasing. In order to create this piece, I followed the artworks and techniques used by famous pop art artist Roy Lichtenstein that can be seen within the three portraits throughout the piece. |
Inspiration
"Crying Girl" by Roy Lichtenstein
1963 "Crying Girl" by Lichtenstein was created in order to focus on the female identity and her emotions. Immediately, the viewers can notice she is crying and feel her emotions through the piece because of her facial features expressing stress and sadness. I appreciated the style of the illustrations of the piece and planned to recreate it, however I did not like the feelings being expressed through it and intended to keep those out by excluding any facial features of my portraits. I made note of the simplistic lines outlining her face and her hair, and how the thickness varied between them in order to emphasize the certain parts of the piece. I wanted to recreate this feeling of simplicity while also keeping the intended meaning.
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"Crying Girl" by Roy Lichtenstein
1964 Roy Lichtenstein created multiple paintings entitled "Crying Girl", however they are very different when compared to each other. This version has darker hues and sets a different mood. Her eyes are not as stressed and worried as the previous version. Also, it can be seen as if she is smiling. Both pieces have the same purpose, to represent the female sensitivity in the late 1900's. He continues to use the simplicity of lines and color throughout his paintings and I was given multiple pieces to refer to for inspiration but this particular piece made me take note of his repetitive use of the side view. The side view is a more creative way of portraying a person without using the regular front view to express their emotions. Often times, a person is leaning more towards a certain side of their body rather than just forward. I decided to create my portraits from differing views of the back, whether that be from the left or right in order to create uniqueness between the three.
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