Things that ignore

Author

Sean Walker Hutton, Rhode Island School of DesignFollow

Date of Award

Spring 6-1-2021

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Fine Arts (MFA)

Department

Painting

First Advisor

Kevin Zucker

Second Advisor

Angela Dufresne

Third Advisor

Jackie Gendel

Abstract

I make landscape and figurative paintings and prints that explore the symbiosis between the sublime and the quotidian. My work is guided by a theory of the sublime that is rooted in divine indifference, the notion that the divine attracts what it initially repels and that absence is presence. Much of my imagery is pulled from a cross country archive of personal photographs and a no-brow collection of film stills. Drawing comparisons between these sources and the ongoing history of landscape, I denaturalize subjects through a painterly appropriation of cinematic sensibilities in order to destabilize a fixed gaze, foster a slow sense of pace and embed an ambivalent characterization of place. The transient figures, animals and apparitions are personified limbs of the natural and urban landscapes that they traverse, wrestling with false ideologies and wobbly sentiments of faith.

Comments

View exhibition online: Sean Walker Hutton, Things that ignore

Recommended Citation

Hutton, Sean Walker, "Things that ignore" (2021). Masters Theses. 800.
https://digitalcommons.risd.edu/masterstheses/800

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.