Recent excitements

Thesis is making me more and more excited about finding and learning about artist that are interested in the same ideas, materials or processes that I am. There have always been artists that I have been attracted to and inspired me but they didn't look like anything that I had been exploring. Recently I was introduced to artists with similar aesthetic as me.

Here's a couple for you!

Sean Landers:

Sean Landers was born in Massachusetts and currently resides in New York. A lot if his work contains written or painted text. I saw some of his work at the SYNTAX show in the Tampa Museum of Art. The pieces I saw there had dealt with free flowing thoughts and spontaneous writing, something that I have been interested in. He has other  works that introduce imagery with his text. I am personally more of fan of the ones with just text and color treatments. I find the text to be more of a visual aspect of the piece rather than serving as a story telling element.

Glenn Ligon:

Glenn Ligon was born, raised and stayed in New York. His work deals with race, identity, language, desire, personal and cultural history. The main concept behind his work explored the struggles of being and African American, homosexual man living in the United States. Ligon relates to my work in the sense of being strongly influenced from personal experiences and how he got through them. He uses a lot of text dealing with civil rights and sometimes creating images out of the text itself by manipulating the density.

I like to think that artists today are never original. As weird as that sounds. We are all influenced by other people and works, we appropriate things to fit our own vision. Not being original does not mean that we are not authentic to the ideas that we, as artists, explore.  I have no problem at all that my work is like other artists and visa versa. Its some what comforting that other people process and think the way I do. Makes me feel not so crazy.

 :]