Fall 17 Graduate Drawing/Painting ARTS 6033/6133

Finally spent time in the studio painting this past weekend. I found myself reading more and diving into theory. It paid off. I've been chewing on the words flesh and body and the dynamics of the differences in their meanings and circulations. Flesh is made into bodies through the relations it partakes. Friday I found myself wanting to paint bodies stacked on themselves wiggling and moving. First instinct was to use porn as a source material... but I've been looking at magazine collages for so long their wouldn't be enough information. I wanted that excitement of painting a body that has been encoded into visual thing.  I ordered these books to read over the break: Deleuze and Zizek  Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia  Organs without Bodies: Deleuze and Consequences The Parallax View (Short Circuits)

Had turkey on Thursday. Someone made these amazing mushrooms with a pecan filling for an appetizer. Besides binge watching The Killing on Netflix and drinking lots of wine I've been reading and painting. I spent the last two days painting my bedroom. I didn't want to be in the studio and with my roommate out for the week is was nice to not be under any pressure. But I didn't get very far. The bedroom reminds me of Van Gogh's bedroom; the perspective and the weird colorful emptiness. Needless to say that didn't get too far away. I don't know what to do now that the semester is over. I have the paintings from the semester to finish. I'm tired of painting rooms. Especially empty ones.

I picked up two books from the library yesterday, one on Rembrandt's self portraits and one on Eakins. I'm doing research on current transgender theories. I have 5 years of experience reading the material but haven't read anything in the last year. Here's a sample from Gayle Salamon  Assuming a Body  "To understand embodiment are necessarily routed through a bodily ego is not to contend that body and ego are coterminous or selfsame, but to assert that projections of various kinds are required in the construction of both the ego and the body, that the ego is itself a projection, and that difference, distance, and otherness are at the heart of the ego and the body (14)." Besides reading I haven't been in the studio. I'm very much burned out from this semester. I had a visitor in the studio yesterday and didn't feel as I knew my own studio. With the break I'll be back in the space working. Probably start on a new painting to get back into the ...

I forget how time moves. It was yesterday when I was wearing shorts and drinking beers with my studio mates at Chautauqua School of Art. Friday I had my final critique for the semester. it was strange listening to the feedback from the 10 faculty members in the room. The strangeness comes from looking at my work as incomplete but not unfinished. The work is finished but I have more to do before they are "complete." "they feel vacant of the soul.   When getting them from magazines, the likelihood of you experiencing them is null.   You are almost playing an athletic game.  College against high school.  You know you can win.  Hopping that you would elaborate where you are specifically in the paintings.   Where are you?"" This observation from the critique came from the harshest professor in the room. I needed this kind of commentary to remind me of my place. The strength of this graduate program is the breadth of the fac...

New Artist Statement: My work is are about my transitioning body and the static relationship with my family in and outside of a space. I define space as the immediate felt, both physical and emotional. For this series, I am exploring the physical environment of an ideal home.   I am interested in showing the issues and intricacies in a living space through the depictions of collaged interiors. By stitching canvas together, I begin to mend the distance between body and family. This is a symbolic effort to merge my current life with the one I have left behind. The paintings present the complications of defining spaces of home, gender, and body. There's not a lot going on except being in the studio when I'm able. Graduate school requires papers and tests to be finished and passed. I'm working on getting back into journaling because that feeds into how I'm seeing my work. I don't see it as self narrative which is different. I'm wondering mor...

I have the multiple pieces sewn together and stretched on stretcher bars. I've been painting them separately but when they came together the marks still resembled my usual way of working. I did sew the pieces together because I'm worried about finals. I have enough work but not enough time invested in each piece to show what I'm after. I'll never sew wet canvas together again. If I ever do it I'll use spray adhesive to fix the canvas instead of piecing everything with pins. There's several areas where the canvas buckles. The feedback did come in after 3 weeks. Don't understand what took so long. One professor recommended these artists: Emma Webster, Evan Boggess, Kati Heck, and Sean Downey. With the few weeks I have left I'll focus on edge work and color relationships. I'm not rushing anything. I'll still be working on these pieces after finals in two weeks. Have to remember to pace things. 

My sessional depression is coming. I'll be sunning around SCUL soon. Maybe bring a cold beverage and enjoy the sun. I purchased a $20 sewing machine from a Goodwill last weekend. This piece of equipment will help me finish a piece I've been working on the past two weeks. I'm painting on unstretched canvas and then sewing it into place. I need a solid week of dry time before I can sew it together. With three weeks before finals I don't have much time. I'm hitting the painting one more time before I let it sit. Once a part comes in I'll be sewing everything together. I working on finding a balance in the look of each piece. The range stylistically needs to be amped up within each work. I'm pushing back and not wanting to do this. It feels uncomfortable making the sections not go together. One section might look like an abstract expressionist and the other "realistic." I do need to be more selective in how I'm choosing each method of mark mak...

The paintings are about my transitioning body and the static relationship with my family in and outside of a "living" space.   The paintings are an attempt to mend the distance between these two parties. This is both a symbolic effort to merge my life with the one I have left behind. I am looking for a balance for these themes and how they reflect in my paintings.

My minds all over the place. Painting in itself, I lose myself in the marks. I don't think of them as marks now. When the brush is really wet and gooey its to slick for a "mark." The sound doesn't match the passage of paint to canvas. What is bothering me is how to proceed in my work. The facets I'm pursuing in the "body" of work is the interaction of my family to me. It's not hitting on a truly personal level. I don't know what that personal subject would be without putting myself in the line of view. I listened to Judith Butler reading her intro to "giving an account of oneself." It's thick but worth the read. I feel gimmicky. Maybe more squeamish about revealing myself. My relationships have failed because of my inability to fully disclose my feelings or even to be "truly" vulnerable.  It's easier to copy these images I've collaged. Easy as in working from preconfigured readymade collages of commercial locat...

Hannah McBroom Artist Statement Mid-Term Review October 2017 The paintings are about my transitioning body and the static relationship with my family in and outside of a "living" space.   The paintings are an attempt to mend the distance between these two parties. This is both a symbolic effort to merge my life with the one I have left behind. I am looking for a balance for these themes and how they reflect in my paintings.  

Watching a name erode taking another form is strange, sad, distant. Sitting in class I have to retrain my body not to react to my old name. My head will jerk to the sound of the "Thom" hitting the back of the throat and the "as" slipping past the tongue. My new name is soft and comforting. "Hannah" says the friend. The paintings are weird. Still too new to absorb my feelings or comprehension for what they are or even what they're doing. One makes my skin crawl and the other makes me uncomfortable. Comfortable would be falling back into the folds of image, copying it as it reads. I haven't done enough to know what is finished or good. One looks "finished" but is only line work. I don't know what I want of these paintings. My work is about my home. The setting back home and the physical one in Fayetteville. While being between a transitioning body and a static relationship with my family I've yet to find comfortable ground. The ...

This week i meet with Marc Mitchell to go over the body of work I'm working on. I posted progress shots of the most current painting in progress. The canvas fabric is sewn together. Today I sewed together the next painting. I found the composition can be served by the channel created by the sewn line. It adds onto the effect of "pieced together." This piece seems to be more about personal placement within the home; my home. I feel this will only serve as a metaphor for disjointed gender. But in the context of a home, then traditional gender roles come into the forefront. That's not what this is about... This project is focused around my gender identity in and outside of a "living" space. Writing more about this will help me focus on what needs to happen for the works to be finished. Sharpie/Interior Latex First Layer of Paint More Paint

I have had somewhat of a breakthrough in the studio this week. Thinking on how gender comes through as a personification of sex, can there be a full understanding of someone’s sex from the implied gender. Taking collaged images of interior spaces, I worked on designing spaces that read as “whole” at a glance. I think the interior spaces are ideal for my search for this idea of gender. Design, arranged, angular, lived in: words that surround a space for a body to live in. The image below will be painted on a 5’x6’ canvas. The canvas was sewn together from scraps in the studio. I think the idea of stitching the body of a piece can play into the overall read. I’ll use a projector to help trace this image onto the canvas. My only concern is the size being big… But the possibility for abstraction and play will help move the piece along as a whole.  

This post is to focus on what I’m trying to convey in any given work. This semester is focused on identifying a subject: What it is and what it does . I don’t have answers at the moment. My aims are to develop my writing (below) with the painted works. Sometimes these will not align. Maybe they never will? My perception is informed by cultural and historical histories of me. I think this can play into how a painting can unfold as an instance of physical instances. Not reality but maybe R eality. A screen or matrix for how physical moments are understood in a grand screen. Even passings that trigger a shift in perception: Transgender is short for transitioning genders. Transitioning to a “pure” gender or perhaps anomaly? I think revealing the underlying context of any given instance can bring a plethora of opportunities to open a painting; to elongate a moment.   What I want to see in a painting is a truth about something. An Alice Nell or Cindy Sherman truth. The h...