Namon D. Bills and Professor Joseph Ostraff, Visual Arts

In my proposal for this project I suggested doing a series of paintings which referred both to Michelangelo’s Last Judgement and to contemporary culture in order to raise questions about the end of the world and our view of it. I feel that conceptually my show stayed quite close to my original idea and was able, through the combination of Michelangelo’s figures and modern-day images and the progression shown through my work in series, to adequately communicate my ideas. Judging by a number of responses I got during my reception I believe that people were intrigued by this combination and that it caused them to think about the issues being addressed.

Formally I feel like the show could have been stronger, but I feel good about the way it looks and about the improvement seen over the past few weeks as I’ve been working with my committee. I learned a lot about form as I’ve worked through this project. I’ve learned that color should be controlled and that the different colors should relate to each other to make the whole composition stronger. I’ve been able to see the advantage of playing flat color planes against modeled shapes and of having tranquil areas in the painting to balance out areas with a lot of energy. As far as composition is concerned it’s important to present shapes that logically relate to each other. I’ve learned some things about technique, like how to blend colors using a fan brush, how to glaze to achieve different color combinations and how to combine glazing with painting opaquely. Most of these things I learned from mistakes I made and through trial and error as I worked on this project. The biggest mistake I made was not to work with my committee throughout the course of my project instead of just at the end. The end result would have been much stronger if I had done that.

I feel good about the show as a whole. I feel like it holds together well as an entity as opposed to a group of paintings. It was important to me to be able to express some things I feel about the end of the world and the division between Zion and Babylon, and I feel like the show as a whole adequately portrays a progression between the two extremes.

This project has been very valuable to me both in earning my bachelor of fine arts degree in painting, but also in gaining experience in working through a large project. The funding provided by the ORCA scholarship enabled me to accomplish this project when I otherwise would not have had the financial means to do so.