Student Statement

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People normally don’t notice the details of everything they see in life until someone points it out. For me, I didn’t notice the beauty of reflection and transparency until I discovered the work of Janet Fish. Then, I started paying attention to my surroundings and the objects I saw and used in daily life. With this inspiration, I decided to do my Concentration on reflection and transparency of everyday items.

During the first part of my Concentration, I focused on the idea of common things being reflected onto other objects. My Cola cans (#1) are reflecting striped cloth, the duck bank (#2) reflects money and the teapot and silver stained cup (#4) reflects my environment and myself. As I progressed through my first few works of art, I struggled with color. I feel my colors were heavy and didn’t manifest the reflective and transparent qualities I was trying to achieve. In order to lighten the feel of my work, I tried to find areas that had better natural light and objects that could be both transparent and reflective. I also worked on my watercolor painting skills. My progress on color mixing and the control of darkness and lightness shows on the marbles (#11), the multi-colored glass (#12) and the tacks (#10). Each work of art also features bright reflective light in the shadows. Placing focus on things I see everyday but don’t always notice, I rendered my shampoo bottles (#6), the tacks on my desk (#10) and found the unique reflective and transparent qualities in our house hold lily pad bowl (#8). The lily pad (#8), which we have had in our house for ages, shows the wobbly transparent quality of the water and the reflection of the sky. I decided that the surface manipulation within this work was best served by a detail (#9).