Critiqued Assignment #1: Photo-volution / "Grounding"

Abstract

This is a digital photograph of Olivia Thomas's painting. It was submitted as the first critiqued assignment, "Photo-volution," on February 8, 2017 in Erin Harmon's Intermediate/Advanced Painting class. The artist's statement reads: "Rolling hills in varied shades of green coupled with wispy-white clouds invent this imaginary world. A bright blue recycling bin marked with the recycling symbol and “SOS” sits in the foreground. Separating the land from the sky sits a gray will with barbed-wire atop. Further back, a cartoonesque vacuum cleaner with two spidery arms reaches into the sky, pulling in traveling airplanes from above. Limited variation in value and shade reduce this landscape to a very flat environment that is simultaneously recognizable but impossible to envision oneself inside of. Different regions of the land itself exhibit different speeds of gesture, so as to create the feeling of each being an entirely different space. Colors that stand out as comparably bright and in stark contract in relation to the rest of the composition hold the narrative content. Recognizable everyday objects allow the viewer to understand this space as something they are, at least in some way, familiar with; one is left wondering how a world and what takes place inside of it can feel so simultaneously familiar and unbelievable."