Curatorial Rationale
My works revolve around the versatility of isolation. The way that isolation can be both positive and negative. This theme comes from personal experiences as I have both felt alone and negatively isolated, and alone but in peace. My isolation during my brother’s cancer treatment was negative and my isolation during walks in the prairie was positive. The subjects are also alone in their own world. Some of them are alone in oppressive darkness or are turning their back on the bright world. Others are surrounded by imagery of their home and the warmth of their personal origin.
Over my different artworks, I have explored drawing, painting, collage, and photography. Drawing allowed me to work in detail and in black and white. Wanting to work on large concepts like composition and color, I began working with paintings. Painting let me change the content as the artwork progressed and implement vibrant color. Collage integrated color and abstract ideas with realism and monochromatic color. Photography felt like a culmination of these other art forms I have done. It was a way for me to work with absolute realism and to still explore color and composition through the framing of the camera. Throughout all of these, I worked with space, color and subject matter to isolate the subjects and further my theme of isolation.
My painting Stranded Alone, made me realize that I wanted to work more with portraiture because I love the emotion in the painting. This led to my photographic series, Home to SCAD, where I emphasized the origin of the individual. That painting was the catalyst that influenced the rest of my works in which there was only ever a single subject.
In most of these artworks, I sought to involve the viewer intimately. This is usually through eye contact with the subject of the artwork. In my painting Stranded Alone the subject, a fisherman is looking directly into the viewers’ eyes, making the viewer a part of the artwork and the man’s life and world. The audience is invited to feel his sadness as he leaves his home, sadness as he risks his life to help his family, sadness as he faces away from the warmth of his life towards a life of the unknown. My arrangement has the majority of works and most large works, above the centerline with vertical sections of similar material, the far right is drawing materials, then paint, and finally photography. This arrangement is meant to lead the viewer through the artworks, inviting them to see the interrelationships between individual works and individual subjects. The lighter colored artworks on the left give the viewer an inviting entry to the works while using generally vibrant colors to lure the audience in. Once amidst the works, they realize the conflict present in each, the decay of the mind, the separation from warmth, and the origins of the individuals. The audience gets closer and closer to the subjects and the theme of isolation as the arrangement introduces photography for the first time. All of a sudden the audience is connected with real people. Some of these people avoid eye contact or gaze off into the distance as the audience looks at their lives, invited, but unwelcome. Some of the portraits make eye contact with the viewer, challenging them to understand where the subject came from and where they are in the moment.
These artworks were selected for their overall quality and for their personal meaning. The paintings reflect my developing interest in painting as a medium and realism as an overall goal. Wanting to add the sub-theme of nature in my works, I selected the works with trees. I chose these because I think that nature complements the theme of isolation really well. Nature is often a key thing I use to isolate the subject, in the forms of water or trees or plants. With the addition of nature, the audience is invited to reconsider the importance of nature. The importance of nature becomes clear when compared to nearby artworks in which man-made structures are used to isolate the subject instead, in Time City and the car garage in the Home to SCAD series.
-- Skye MacCoon
