2022 / Written by Chi Zhang
Rift in Time
A Senior Individual Project inspired by automatic drawings.
Painting is a way, I discovered not long ago, to see myself out of reality. What is fascinating to me about creating art is how I can escape to another world that is created by me. To share my research of the relationship between reality and abstract thoughts therefore became my impetus for the project.
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In developing this series of work, I discovered the aesthetics of everyday life, within a created space full of my emotions and memories. By the practice of automatic drawing over time, I found what flows in my mind, which then became part of the painting. Each of the paintings has different settings indicating a stage of my life, and each subject or figure is the fruition of my unconscious emotions.
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I have so many explanations of certain subjects or movements of figures in these works, but I will skip the long talk of my works. The only thing I want to say is this—they are not just falling individuals in stormy weather, they are pieces of puzzles of myself, but could also relate to any individuals who enjoy the moment of seeing them.
01
Beginning Phase
It begins with sketches on paper. I was obsess with express the inner feelings through the patterns, waves, and flows. The beginning phase of creating a SIP was tough, I had no clue what it means by "discover what you want to express with art", so doodling random things that filled in my mind were the first action during the confusion stage of this project. This stage actually became one of the most important phase of developing the whole series.
I then decide to go bigger.
A greater than life size charcoal automatic drawing based off the pattern that often appears in my unconsciousness stage. I decided to record them with a grounded position with the help of charcoal and pencil. Keeps filling each space up with daily recording which finally became a piece of the starting point of the project.
Then automatic drawing slowly becomes part of my routing. In order to drop down my thoughts as complete as possible, I tape white paper around four sides of the walls in my room. By the end of the project, I completed 4 scrolls, each of them is approximately 5 meters long with various media, charcoal, pencil, color crayon, and china marker.
Switched from flat on the ground or wall, I decided it is time to gather all the thoughts to the canvas. With the repeated but changed pattern, various of objects were popping out from the flat drawings.
02
Creating Phase
RIT vol. 1, 2020
Oil/Acrylic on canvas
RIT vol. 2, 2020
Oil/Acrylic on canvas
RIT vol. 3, 2020
Oil/Acrylic on canvas
03
Concept Development
Gemini, 2021
Oil/Acrylic on canvas
Reaching the Stars, 2021
Oil/Acrylic on canvas
04
Art Show
Kalamazoo College, MI
6/12/2021 - 9/1/2021
05
Process
Abstract
This project served as an exploration into the enigma that is memory and emotion. While my initial goal was to look to characterize what memory and emotion can be visualized as in the physical plane, it became a very personal and transformative experience that I grew through both skill wise and on a deeper level, coming to terms with my past and remembering more about myself. While working on this project I took a few different directions in the beginning, and ultimately it allowed me to venture outside of my comfort zone and refine a style that I find unique to myself. I created a series of scrolls and on canvas creations that mix different types of media, including but not limited to, charcoal, oil and acrylic paints, oil pastel, china markers, and even digital media. This project came out with positive results, I find it to be both evocative to others’ senses and capable of bearing a large amount of personal emotional weight and formative experience. This project has been one of the first experiences I have had creating something truly cathartic.
Introduction
I still remember my naïve childhood. Every birthday, before I blew out my candles, the wish that I whispered devoutly was always to be an artist. I loved art in many forms when I was a kid. I used to sit near my father’s table when he was asked to paint some Chinese watercolor paintings. I cannot really recall what he created on those pieces of rice paper, all I remember was the moving paint brushes as they danced on the surface. It was at that point that I figured I wanted to be an artist too. But my father is not an artist, in fact, his job is no way close to that of an artist. I grew up in an environment where people are satisfied with enough food and a functional house. Being an artist is not a proper job in others’ opinion at that time. That is why I never mentioned my dream, neither does my father.
Moving to the United States began a completely different stage of my life. I was accepted into a new environment, but I tried my hardest to not take any art classes. My mother knew I had a passion for art—she would support me with some art supplies for me to have fun at home—but she prefers me more as a future scientist. I took my first painting class in my third year at Kalamazoo College; I was upset with how expensive painting materials were. At the same time, I switched to a Studio Art major without telling my parents. That might be the first time I followed my passion by making a brave decision, and wanted to tell my stories with painting.
While I continued taking different art and art history classes, I admired the naturalistic paintings of the Renaissance period, but I am more fascinated by the surreal works that help me escape into other artists’ worlds. I painted various photo-based paintings, until I was a little tired with a practice of skills and emulating others. I desired to have my own art style, I was anxious to deliver my own thoughts through my works, but I also had too many worries towards the quick graduation which will happen the very next year.
Early Work
In the early stage of gathering ideas towards my Senior Individual Project (SIP), I saw it as a tool, an aid, to gain entrance to my desired graduate school. I looked into many artists’ works, most of them digital artists or illustrators. I used paintings as if I was using a drawing tablet to fill out colors. The paintings that I developed in the early senior year, during our Advanced Studio class, were full of other people’s ideas with mixed styles. I realized I was not enjoying what I was doing: soulless works. When I was dispirited with my work, one of my professors, whom I admired, chatted with me about what I could do next. I remembered clearly, she said, the reason K students develop SIPs, is to discover what they are fascinated with, instead of thinking of the SIP as a door to future opportunities. I could never forget that moment, when I realized, what I am fascinated by is not painting with others’ ideas, it is more of a way to escape into my own mind and let all the questions go with the wind. Just like what my father did with his brushes, his thoughts seamlessly became reality.
After the conversation with my professor, I decided to take a break and clear my thoughts. During the break period, I would always read books about various artists’ works. I got excited to read their stories, I enjoyed trying to read their art works. At the same time, when I gathered different ideas, I also learned how to be proud of my previous works. I remembered those days in the studio, I would display the recent works that were still in process, or those that were finished. I would either hang them on the wall or lay them down on the floor—I discovered that I was always a fan of painting cloth. The enjoyment of layering the colors on top of each other is one of the reasons why I was so fascinated by painting drips and creating the flow of fabric on canvas. I love seeing all the hues become a family with their unique appearance; all of them came to life and brought a scene that stays in my mind for a long time. Just the process of looking at my works gave me plenty of flashbacks.
For instance, I was always sensitive about painting my self-portrait. But one day I discovered a photo from my childhood, I was so afraid that I would lose the photo, so I decided to paint it instead. Plenty of memories just came up to me and brought me back to the age of eight, I started to recall that piece of my memory, the people that were with me in those days, and silly things I have done in my childhood. I even started to recall that specific day in my mind, there would have the fresh smell of the spring grass that was under my tiny feet, there would be a pair of strong hands that held me to different places, there would be my unstoppable crying that was stubborn enough to get a desired toy. I realized painting does not just function as a beautiful piece of decoration in the house, it could also be a lot more than a flat canvas. I do not have a definite definition of art, but I learned a new way to look at art works. They sometimes held people’s memories, dreams, and they sometimes could be a language for artists to communicate with the world. They can be so much more than just pretty. I learned so much of myself just by staring at those canvases. This makes me so desperate to just pick up brushes or pencils to record what jumped out of my mind.
I started making automatic drawings, to record various things that triggered me in my daily life. I started to be one of those students drawing random subjects near my notes. It was more fun than I thought it would be. I started doodling various lines, patterns, and wire-like shapes. Sometimes I had daydreams about my past, my future, and sometimes I woke up at night and recorded some fantasy that occurred in my dreams. As I collected all those puzzles from my inner being, I put them all together on a larger size of paper. This is where my first piece of work from my SIP came from, all those memories, random emotions, dreams, or real time subjects—they came from within me. I can recall every one of those marks on the drawing, each of which represents a story in my mind, and this time they resonate with me, dance with me.
Process Development and Influences
After I developed the first real sized drawing, I sublimated those ideas into paintings. During the same time I started to paint, I looked through various artists that developed amazing works. In the process of researching, Mo Baala and Franz Ackermann caught my eye. Their works are of lively creatures that are full of personality and offer visual enjoyment through their wonderful details. They both had a similar way of creating chaotic spaces, but in completely different styles. Mo Baala creates his inner world along with his unique personal stories and experiences—his world is a crisis with his authentic doodle-like drawings, that deliver his emotions and memories to the viewers through chaotic bright colored lines. Franz Ackermann, on the other hand, invited everyone into his collapsed land, his multiply dimensional world, created with color blocks and geometry. Both of them create a fantasyland full of emotions. I was fascinated by how long I could stare at their works and always discover something fantastic. I found order in their chaotic works, which I admired. Therefore, I picked the biggest size of canvas I could work with and continued to develop my painting.
I discovered a direction that was best to work with after the midterm review, gathered from all kinds of great ideas from different art professors. After I finished a satisfactory-sized painting, I continued with the practice of making automatic drawings. But instead of drawing it on my sketch book, I decided to draw it with charcoal on bigger and longer pieces, I called them “scrolls.” I discovered this was a better path for me, not just to record images from my mind, but also making completed pieces. Just as my fantasy continues to fly out from me, the scrolls continue to grow. After finishing almost two wall lengths’ scrolls, and some small automatic drawings on my sketch book, I picked up one of the elements from them with which to continue working—a group of people free falling. This became a motif that recur in my work. In the next painting I developed, instead of having various elements connected with ribbon-like shapes, I decided to further focus on just the people-based construction itself.
I have always enjoyed taking photos of my everyday life. Often, things will occur that invoke emotions and I feel the need to capture them. Something as simple as a pastel sky can drive me to freeze that moment in time—once fleeting, now imprisoned. I get to store plenty of my precious moments that were to become part of me. Other than being addicted to taking photos, I am obsessed with roads and highways. I am infatuated with those magic lines, yellow and white, that lead people on their journey. Therefore, to develop my first painting, I decided to start with one of the most recent photos I have taken. It is one of the intersections that I drive past every morning on my way to school. It not only represents the beginning of college life, but it also carries with it many emotions and memories that will never leave me. Becoming an adult and completing college is a huge life milestone for me, however, I cannot recall the small intricacies of the day that I decided to fly the nest and leave the direct care of my parents. Looking back I remember the emotions that ran through me: fear and foreboding. Therefore, I decided to paint the stormy weather at the top of the intersection. There are plenty of utility poles, and tree branches that grow unfearfully. There are also traffic lights that were crushed by the wind, and many birds that are terrified by the cars speeding by. I decided to leave those elements in the painting along with the stormy weather to depict the coming of age that I was experiencing. On top of this scene that is so powerful in my mind, I decided to add many bodies free falling or defying gravity. Several individuals recur in this painting to give a continuity between my creations, representing the thoughts and dreams that I had during that time. Each of them is unique but interact with each other in different ways. They do not represent specific persons; they are strangers that I would encounter in the future. Those figures, in a way, function as lines that connect with the background. Just like what Mo Baala and Franz Ackermann did in their work, using their unique elements to create a visual map through their canvas, I aim to create a mind maze through those interacting lines and figures.
After I created this painting, I received plenty of interpretations and comments. This is the first painting that helped me improve my understanding towards art. I love how playful and emotional the audience can get through reading art works, which strongly encouraged me to step forward and create more pieces. At the same time when I started the new painting, a new scroll also was taped on the wall in my apartment. I was encouraged to try different media and more colors from the weekly reviews. Therefore, I decided to use oil pastels and China markers on my automatic drawings rather than the heavy charcoal. In contrast to charcoal, oil pastels transported me back to my childhood; the feeling of doodling uninhibited upon a stonewall was one of the highlights of my life as a child. I still went with the black oil pastels for the drawings, and I recalled various memories when I started drawing with crayon-like materials. Therefore, some parts of the second scroll started to involve more memories from my adolescence. At the same time, I started to miss home, miss China. During the period when I was developing my SIP, COVID-19 strongly began in China—the more I looked at news every day, the more helplessness I felt. It was a dark period, and I could do nothing more than express the emotions that mixed in my head with painting. While I was continuing the scroll, I was also in process of beginning my second painting.
I decided to paint one of the highways in Kalamazoo as my photo-based background. When I get emotional or stressed out, I have a bad habit of driving on the highway as a sort of release. The feeling of driving on the highway helps to erase my feeling of inferiority and mitigates the feelings of discontentedness. This specific location now carries many of my sensitive emotions, and I decided to paint that as the overall background for this piece. As the bright lights blink on the highway, I placed many different individuals grouping from the corner of the canvas. Each of them sticks with each other tightly, and they formed a tornado like shape towards the road. In contrast to the first painting, more people are presented in this work. I aimed to suggest them as a group of people that formed a specific shape which occupied mainly in the center of the canvas. They are the mixed feelings and dreams that I received after I came to the United States, they represent many people that I encountered the moment I arrived in this country
After several paintings and more practice towards the final painting in my project, I had developed clearer theme and specific method of how to develop my painting in this series. I love the texture and variety of colors involved with oil paint; I also like the bright colors that acrylic can offer to my work. I kept the almost larger than life size canvas, as it can better deliver the details and information of my paintings. I also had so many great conversations with my advisor who helped me evoke more meaning with my works. I decided to try different figures this time then only focusing on free-falling persons. Recalling the first painting I finished before the mid-term critique, as well as the first drawing I did with my charcoal, I realized the importance of the subjects that I chose to have put into those works. Colorful balloons, bicycles, traffic lights, lines, and many more objects—they are subjects that I applied emotions to, they are the things that I recalled from specific days from my childhood. They are personal and universal, and they don’t necessarily coincide with my memories alone, they can also resonate with others’ memories. As I keep brainstorming an idea for the last painting, I also started another scroll. I was encouraged to experiment with different medias and colors; therefore, I chose to use a pallet of colors that are usually foreign and peculiar to myself of oil pastels to express my feelings for the automatic drawing. Thinking about childhood, which brings me back to the naïve and playful period in China, I was struggling with my family issues, but my parents kept it as a secret to protect me, and offered me a safe and warm childhood. My heart immediately becomes full of playful color when I think of my younger age. Those fantasies also were picked up in my last scroll, it was full of imagination. I had so many sweet and sour memories flowing out as I was doodling scenes on the paper. At the same time, I started developing my painting.
One of the locations that always reminds me of my adolescence is the small town I went to with my family—we spent few days daydreaming around the relaxing pathed town. We watched the boats slowly drifting away into the sunset from the river in the middle of the town, as the wind slowly travels between and around everyone, this moment of peace whispered in my mind and sent me back to my childhood. I was desperate to carve this soft memory into the canvas. As I mentioned before, I aimed to create a dreamlike piece that full of childish moments, the overall light purple/pink tone then became my main background along with the photo-based painted town. Other than that, I decided to paint repeated images of me, and both of my parents in the painting, along with different elements that I depicted before: balloons, bicycles, and objects that contained memories with my family. The image of me wears the blue overalls just like the kid’s picture I found a while ago. My mother and father were placed in different location in the painting, as they indicated the different stage of my childhood. As my story started from my father, I was under his wings for my naïve childhood, until I came to America and finally got close with my mother. Many of my figures are interacting with one side of my parents, or various objects, until they come close to the river. The relationship that bonds every moment of my life close to my parents became the connection that told my story. I wanted to treasure many emotions that accompany me to this day.
All those paintings express my emotions through the rift in time. In contrast from the previous paintings, in which I aimed to group those images of people to create the dreamlike feeling, the last piece of my SIP is more personal. As every figure of people meant not just an important part of my life, they are vivid moments that I want to remember deeply through the reaches of time. They proved to me that Art is not just many color blocks that meant to be pretty on some random walls, it could also be my unique language to communicate with others. Art could be a lot more than just aesthetic.
Conclusion
The completion of my Senior Individualized Project, as well as my understanding towards making art, has been a fruitful culmination of practicing with multiple media and experimenting with conceptual ideas. I grew from simply painting references of images to painting authentic ideas and concepts that interest me, straying away from the typical traditional form of rendition of space and artistic stylization. The SIP gave me the opportunity to accelerate forth into a new dimension of painting and realize new brainstorming methods and painting composition. It also encouraged me to tell my father, the dream that I have wished for every birthday until now, is always to be an artist.