waiting for my hair to dry

So, I've taken the advice of our new art professor at tarleton and I have just dealved into meditation on what it is that inspires me. What I love, what I don't love and what I want to talk about in my art. This applies not only to my paintings, but my photography as well. I've always known what my art was about, but had trouble explaining it, so here it is:

I am a hopeless romantic at heart, I love vintage things and I admire the lifestyles of those who have come before me. I admire their spirit, their simplicity and their ability to enjoy life without newer techonologies. The lifestyles of people in farming and rural communities inspires me. Not just the cowboys, but the wife that cooks a meal for her family, the waitress at the cafe downtown, or anyone who enjoys a simplistic life.

Now, my art is not just about those happy times and these simple communities of people. It is also about the advancement of technology and the loss of those "good old days." I want to encompass the insensitive take-over of those perfect lives. My work mourns the loss of community, the loss of people with simple dreams and the loss of the beauty of simplicity.

Therefore, in context my artwork can't be put into a 1940's setting. The loss hasn't occured yet. I know my surroundings and this ideal is a reflection of my fealings about the present. Not all of these communities are gone. The spirit still remains in small rural towns. Those are my backgrounds. The laundry matt, the cafe, the barber shop and the settings of childhood. Those backgrounds and settings reflect that good old spirit, but in many cases, I depict them as worn and old. They are being lost as we speak, and eventually, those locations will be lost: torn down for a new idea, a starbucks or a walgreens.

This leads me to the focal point of my art: the individual. The individual reflecting back on life. Thinking about loss and the advancement into the future. With my photography, I will be focusing on those "how we were" moments. Years later, they'll look back and see what has been lost, what has changed essentially. The individual is the significant aspect of my artwork. Although the settings are important and the context of the image matters a great deal, I want the viewers to focus on the individual and their life, because it is significant in time. We all are. And if I can focus my viewers on identifying with that individual for a moment, I will have allowed them to experience something lost and identify with my purpose. We need to pause in this period of advancement to reflect on life and its purpose.


Now that I have dealved off into the intense thinkings of my artisitic mind and allowed you insight to my soul, I'll log out so that I can finish drying my hair. It's labor day and my husband is wondering what is for lunch.