Anna'Lisia Duncan

4/3/2024

Senior Conference

Artist Statement

      I love capturing the beauty of abstract concepts in human life, whether that be positive or negative. These concepts, better defined as Virtues and Vices, are all character traits that you would not necessarily physically see in the real world, but are more-so abstract characteristics that all humans have. All this is done through symbolic elements such as colorful color palettes and patterns, line work, and subjects that are subjective to the overall concept being represented. It is important for me to capture the representation of these handpicked virtues and vices through the fusion of abstract elements of art and symbolic subjects which are primarily animals (mythical and modern). The artworks portraying virtues have either solid or stylized backgrounds with primary and complementary colors as the focused color palettes, whilst the vices have rough textured backgrounds with darker complementary colors and heavy black ink.

      Many of my artworks have a series of elements and principles of art that can be visible through careful analysis, however, I would say for a good number of my works, color, pattern, line, and emphasis are the most essential and the most obvious at first glance, as well as working simultaneously with each other. As far as the material that I use for my artwork, I used Higgins liquid ink, Acrylic ink, and Acrylic paint to create my series of works. The ink allows me to create a variety of small details and visible texture marks, which is visible in a majority of my works. It also allows me to manipulate the richness of the color and the amount of translucent effect that I try to achieve through some works. I also use a variety of drawing pens for any kind of meticulous designs or patterns, which is visible in one of my largest artworks portraying oppression.

      I draw inspiration from Claude Monet and Louise Goalby. Claude Monet is known for his series of paintings during the Impressionist time period. His works demonstrate the use of heavy to very detailed and visible brush strokes, to create an alluring and stylized artwork. I try to accomplish this same idea through the use of the ink and acrylic. Louise Goalby is a freelance digital artist from England and I came across their series of colorful and bright artworks through Artstation and Instagram. Louise is a major inspiration to me because of the very vibrant designs of the animals as well as creating an unrealistic, elemental, and abstract design overall. From both artists, the use of color is also what inspired me to achieve the same goal. This is what encouraged me to push for the same style but in the form of depicting Virtues and Vices in human life.

      My work expresses a mixture of positive and negative human concepts, or known as Virtues and Vices. The main theme or topic of my series of artworks covers the abstract concepts in human life, which are things we can't physically see, but still support or destroy the function of human life. The virtues portrayed in my show are: Balance, Wisdom, Dreams, Purity, Love, All the time, and Fulfillment. The Vices are Trickery, 8 Deadly Sins, Oppression, Corruption, Addiction, Intrusive Thoughts, and Hatred. My intention is to not only portray them through symbolism elements and color, but also, to demonstrate my take on concepts that are not visually defined in the real world. These virtues and vices can look differently for everyone. Overall, these artworks are meant to state that although these are concepts that we can't exactly see nor grasp physically, they are concepts that continue to run human society whether that is in a positive or negative way.