Artist Statement

For my final project series, I knew I wanted to take a very personal approach to it. In my perspective, some of the best pieces of works derived from the most personal points of life. So, I chose to create my series in response to the reason I started art at all in the first place. (Without getting too into detail) my mom has been sick my entire life and it has taken a toll on me, her, and my entire family. As a way to ‘mask’ the worst parts of the sickness or find an out to all the bad parts, I always caught myself drawing. It was almost like a cure that made me really happy and took away all the bad in the world. To me, art was my fix and my way of making things better.

So for this series, I created four 24x24 inch charcoal drawings to represent my response to the different stages of going through my mom’s terminal sickness. I chose charcoal because along with it being my favorite drawing medium, I never use to use it before this class; it almost represents my explorationation/metamorphosis in art. I chose a brown background because I love the way it contrasts the charcoal and how it's very neutral. It doesn't give off an immediate meaning and viewers are left to decipher what it means by themselves.

Out of every style I played around with, I kept finding myself drawn to hyper realism and realistic portraits. They were super complicated and I knew I would never be able to draw something like that, but I kept trying. The harder it was, the more focused I was to try and push myself to do the best I could. I also noticed that the more intense realistic pieces I tried to mimic, the more I was in my own art world and less surrounded by this sickness and the bad that came with it. It was like nothing else mattered but art and it was the best feeling ever. It was driving me to do better and push myself. At the end of the day, I wanted to create something that showed what pushed me and morphed me into an artist and it's still the driving factor behind me.

Each piece is a zoomed in portion of a woman's body with water either splashing on her or dripping down from her. The water represents this weight on me and my family from this sickness. The hands holding it are representing this act of trying to control and handle the situation even though it never works. The water on the face dripping down represents act of accepting what it is and letting it consume you (I chose the face because it's such a vulnerable place on the body). The next one is a drawing of the back to showcase my family turning our backs in hopes of protecting ourselves; this piece has less water than the preceding ones because by taking care of ourselves, we are shaking this weight off of us. The last one is of the feet with barely any water on them. This showcased our walk away from this ‘darkness’ and how we don't let it control us anymore.

I drew influence from artists like Diego Fazio, Jason de Graaf, Ron Mueck

Paul Lung, and Roberto Bernardi. Diego is passionate about art because he likes to define all 'exaltation of inexperience or rather an autodidact’. He inspired me to keep pushing my work to be better because he states he’s always looking for perfection and therefore he never stops evolving. Jason is an artist from Canada who bases his work about an alternate reality. Even though he works hyper realistically, he states that his goal is not to produce photo like work but rather "to create the illusion of depth and a sense of presence”. I liked that even though he’s incredibly talented, he looks at his work as a means to explore his ability to communicate something to people. Ron is an Australian sculptor who creates large scale human models. I specifically enjoyed his work because of his experimentation with scale of the human body. It forces the viewer to consider space. Paul is an artist from Hong Kong who develops realistic drawings with graphite pencils. I admire his work because most of the time you can notice pencil streaks right away, but with him it looks just like a photo. He spends an average of 60 hours on each piece which represents his devotion and commitment to art. Roberto is an oil based artist from italy. His works are very colorful, yet showcase everyday items like candy or dishes. He turns everyday mediocre things into the most interesting works that captivate the viewer.

Artist Bio

Caroline Malcolm is from San Diego, California. She is a multimedia artist specializing in drawing, painting, and graphic design. She is a senior PR/Ad major with a minor in Studio Art from Chapman University. She discovered her love for art in high school when she took an intro to painting course. She plans to pursue being an art director or  painting in San Francisco where her sisters live in the future.  

http://twistedsifter.com/2014/03/hyperrealistic-still-life-paintings-jason-de-graaf/

https://www.hauserwirth.com/artists/52/ron-mueck/biography/

http://www.odditycentral.com/pics/the-amzing-pencil-art-of-paul-lung.html

http://www.robertobernardi.com/pagine/biography.html

https://www.hongkiat.com/blog/hyper-realistic-paintings/