Date of Award
12-2006
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Fine Arts (MFA)
Legacy Department
Visual Arts
Committee Chair/Advisor
Jensen, Heidi
Abstract
ABSTRACT
The landscape becomes an avenue to explore and express the process of looking, observing,finding, and gathering. I turn to the landscape to find inspiration and motivation that provokes contemplation and questions of the world around us. My work functions as an extension of my experiences, observations, and as a record of thoughts gathered from fleeting elements. The significance of the images I draw is directly tied to my quest of contemplating, understanding and questioning processes in life and how time and change leaves its mark on objects. I focus on my everyday familiar surroundings, because our daily encounters and repetitious routines provide a constant source of changes that take place. The objects and forms reveal the world around me, my
experience with perception, and the process of creating the work. These ideas focus directly on perceiving visual stimulation in our environment, what become a record of that experience, and the impact of time.
The paintings become a landscape and environment in which to place and create forms to be discovered. I use the process of archaeology as a metaphor to describe my creative process and investigation of the work. The role of time is defined in the work by depicting ephemeral experiences, transformative surface and forms, and a sense of the artist's hand. The body of work is about building images that can challenge viewers' relationship with patience, perception, and time.
Our experience with flashing visual images, video, television, and computers, is over-stimulating our
senses, thus fatiguing our receptivity. My engagement with sensory perception, evidence of change,slowing experience, and careful observation is used to question how today's society is focused on speed and urgency in which information is received and experienced.
Recommended Citation
Raxter, Adrienne, "Landscape and Slowing" (2006). All Theses. 55.
https://open.clemson.edu/all_theses/55