Date of Award
Spring 5-31-2025
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Fine Arts (MFA)
Department
Painting
First Advisor
Jackie Gendel
Second Advisor
Yasi Alipour
Abstract
When I start a painting, I’m never sure how the painting process is going to go or how the painting will be resolved. I don’t plan things out or make sketches in preparation for the paintings. Each decision is intuitive. I typically have a question, a response from a prior painting. As a result, all the paintings in the studio become related as they respond to each other.
Doubt and curiosity steady my hand, balancing one another out. Through hard work, time, mistakes and the occasional success, a painting gradually emerges from the surface. Sometimes it is lost again for a while and needs to be excavated back out. There’s a rhythm to this process: the painting builds up, things are pushed back again, then it builds and builds and builds, then sometimes pushed back again. Sometimes there is a “final move” to lock things in, but it doesn’t always work. The rhythm relies on this gradual evolution that occurs over time. Each decision is considered, weighed against other possibilities. The color needs to be right. The speed of each mark needs to be right. Everything needs to be just so, otherwise the move doesn’t work. Sometimes the conclusion sneaks up on me quickly and a painting surfaces within weeks. Other paintings require months or remain unresolved for years before returning to them with a little more patience and having learned more from other paintings.
With this process of decision making, when is the painting done? As it approaches an ending, the painting slowly begins to resist change. Eventually, finally, the painting reaches a point where it stares back at me, despite not having eyes or a corporeal body. It reaches a certain density, a vibration, a voice. Color becomes a conduit for this voice, emanating from a parallel world. Saturated and close in value, the color relationships speak to one another, energy pressing out from within. I think of them as having a life of their own; studio creatures made through the development of their character through this evolution. They even become friends with each other, stronger together than apart. There’s something queer about them in the way that they lean on one another, finding unexpected ways to hold each other up. I feel like I belong with these paintings too. We fight, we negotiate, we work together, we make compromises. Sometimes we need some space from one another, too. The paintings are most alive when they are metamorphosing. So am I. I want the paintings to remain open for as long as possible. When the paintings feel resolved too quickly, I feel disappointed. I feel like I haven’t gotten enough out of them, learned from them enough yet. We haven’t spent enough time together to build trust that this is the way things should be.
Recommended Citation
Connell, Mary J., "Parallel Worlds" (2025). Masters Theses. 1378.
https://digitalcommons.risd.edu/masterstheses/1378
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.