Artist Statement

Theme: Death

Daniella Jacques 1/24/13 Presented to Mme Alex fichera

As a high school student whose visual artist background is reserved to the school’s visual art courses, observing artistic family members, and self-taught and learnt lessons: art is not only a creative way of expression. Art is also a relaxing diversion of the many thoughts in my mind and of the things around me. As an artist I do not intend on producing art explicitly about one or two subjects, nor do specialize in the use of a specific medium or techniques. I enjoy the variety and the challenge of trying new ideas, concepts, styles, etc… that I come across or are suggested to me. Whatever the subject of the piece might be or composed of, the process of creating or attempting to create it allows me to solely focus on fabricating it to the best of my abilities.

In the majority of my pieces you may notice that there is a lot of detail. Incorporating detail seems to have developed into my style. I try and focus on working meticulously at each detail of every aspect of the piece in hope to produce a satisfying final product. The pieces with less are usually a result of me challenging myself to attempt to avoid falling back into the usual routine. Usually when drawing, painting, sculpting, lino carving, etc… I begin with choosing a theme and then narrow it down to a subject, concept, etc… With that in mind, I move on to formulating a general idea or even many specific ideas of how I imagine the final work will turn out. The process continues with me experimenting with every aspect of the piece; producing many drafts. Taking the best parts of each drafts, I take the time to meticulously replicate each chosen parts to create the final product.

The art pieces which are presently on display are not the best of my works, but they are linked through a concept which currently fascinates me; and that concept is Death, or the symbols of Death. The painting of the raven and skull was done with a curiosity to know what Death symbolized for different cultures. I knew that the raven was often used to portray death, but through some research I discovered that it also signified war, illness, good hunt, and much more. In one way or another its’ other symbolic meanings all implied death, but what stuck with me was that it was seen as the messenger of all prophecies. My immediate thought was, “How does this tie in with death?”. After a few moments I came to realise that death was a passage which all living organisms were bound to face. That the prophecy for all living things was death; that everything was going to die at one point. The raven foretells death. I went through a similar process when looking into the symbolic meanings of a skull, and I was surprised to find that it, for some, meant a good life after death. I thought that that notion tied well with the one of the raven being able to foretell the future.

The theme or concept for the Time Sayings painting and its draft, is as their title hopefully indicates. I had wished to portray Time through its many different sayings. With this in mind I listed as many as I could think of and some that I found after some research. After some discussions with my teacher and colleagues, I was able to narrow down my list of sayings to a few. The chosen sayings are: Time Flies, Killing Time, Time is Money, Can’t Fight Time, Racing against Time, Time Is Precious, and Time Slips Away. I include each and every one of these sayings by dividing the medium, which I would be painting on, into overlapping rectangular frames. Dividing the paper like such made seem as if each saying was a postcard or its own painting. Hopefully the sayings are well portrayed, and can be understood. Its relation to Death is a simple one. I find that eventually in time, everyone will die; and these sayings should act as a reminder of how time is precious, fleeting, and can’t be fought against. That time itself is limitless – endless – but for living organisms it’s a precious resource that will continue until everything lays dead at its feet, for there will be nothing to take notice of it.

As for the skeleton, the disproportionality of the bones were unintentional but this allowed me to experiment with how to display the sketch. At first I believed that cutting it up and placing it upon a black page, would mask the disproportionality. I was hoping that it would appear as if we were at a giants’ feet looking up. Although, this did not work as planned, but I stuck with it since I did not know what to do from there. Thus, when placing up my art pieces in the display area, I felt as if there was something off and my eye kept going back to the skeleton. I pondered for quite a while before thinking of adding more colour to it. I went with a metallic blue to match the raven and skull painting, but even after this something wasn’t completely right. Therefore, after a suggestion from my mother, I started to play around with the arrangement of the pieces of bones. It was then, when I decided to place the bone pieces in the criss-crossed fashion. This placement took a bit away from the fact that my sketch was disproportional and added some intricacy or life to it.

It is rare that the final product will turn out the way which I first pictured it in my mind. It usually ends up being more visually appealing, or as equally appealing, or worse than the original. Even so, I believe that art pieces are never finished. I always hope that the viewers of my piece would have an inkling of the message, theme, subject, etc… which inspired me to fabricate it. Although, the concept of the piece should be continuously evolving, rendering it the act of explaining the piece or trying to, is difficult. The piece should hopefully speak for itself, and however the viewer(s) perceive it, is how it evolves since it’s in the end, the correct interpretation. It wouldn’t be the same perception of the piece as mine, but there really isn’t a right or a wrong interpretation of the piece; therefore it’s right.