Michelle Andreano, Thesis

To see the paintings I am referring to, please go to Michelle Andreano's Blogspot...

At the end of the last semester, during which I was working on paintings, I created my Luggage Series, a group of 4 finished canvases and one unfinished one, as well as several found objects. The piece was based on family secrets and warped relationships and all the emotions related to them. Working on that piece was so personal and upsetting that I found that after working on it for two class periods that I couldn't do it in a class setting anymore, and I only brought it into the last class when it was due because I knew I could not present it twice.


Over the break between sessions, I created another piece that was also very personal and emotional, the painting I decided to call Untitled 1, because I didn't want to define what it was a painting of and also because when I painted it, I started it very differently than I usually do. I just decided to take my frustration and anger, paint, and see what happened. So even though the piece took the form of very crude animalistic melting bones, with the splatters and drips of paint,


At the beginning of the semester, I started with the idea of doing a series of self-portraits. I did so in the two assignments we had in the class, but once we were free to do whatever we wanted, I created the Warped Self Portrait, which was based off a picture of myself which became a much older and different looking version of myself. I had thought of calling the piece Self Portrait from Another Life, but that title wasn't true, since it is me, perhaps as I feel inside sometimes.


Through out the class, we kept a sketchbook, and the next piece I created was based on a drawing from it. That piece, Running Blue Eyes, was unique in that sense, since it was the first time that one of my sketches became the basis for a painting. I also explored options for how to draw onto the canvas without creating a solid graphic line.


My goal for the Vanity piece was to create something like the Luggage Series, dealing with the same subject but in a less revealing way; I am not really satisfied with the piece because I want to do so much more with it, to embed it with 'secrets' and objects until the wood seems to dissappear. I expect to continue working on the piece bit by bit. Seeing Blue & Red, the two 24” by 48” canvases, I started by just creating a background for both and then doing the 'sketches' on the red one and leaving the blue one the way it was.


Though I thought I had deviated away from the self portraits by jumping to examining emotions in my paintings and trying to let what was inside me determine the direction my work took, it only made the pieces into more accurate representations of myself at different points in time. So the idea that everything you make as an artist is a self-portrait in some way really rang true in this past semester's work.


Since I started out with the idea of creating a series of self portraits, I looked at the work of Frida Kahlo as an inspiration, since I appreciate how she manages to show her inner self in the paintings she made. We also made several trips to New York and other places that were also very inspiring. A lot of my inspiration ending up coming from my sketchbooks from the past and present and some of the art books I've collected over the years. Looking back at what I've done in the past and seeing what I still think was good and worthwhile helped me see what direction I should take.


Coming into this semester was scary, because I knew we were going to have a lot of freedom. At the end of last semester I knew from what others said and what I thought that the Luggage series was one of the best and unique pieces I had done to date, but it felt like a very hard act to follow, even more so because of the highly personal nature of it. I started out trying to create something of that caliber without getting really submerged in the context, but when I did so all the stuff I made was horrible. That was why, for the self-portrait piece, I brought in three pieces, the simple painting, a ceramic face, and the Bone piece (Untitled 1). The bone piece was the only one I was satisfied with, and I created that over the break. I wasn't even going to bring that in except for my dissatisfaction with the others. That experience showed me that I couldn't get what I wanted without putting something of myself into it and risking it being upsetting to myself or others.


Trying to find a way to delve into the past without becoming caught up in it has been a challenge this semester, especially as more and more personal issues have come up this past semester. Working with less specific matter (emotions and relationship dynamics, rather than specific secrets and frustrations) has helped relieve some of the tension, maybe even helped me deal with it.

I worked with a number of different media (ceramics, acrylic paint on canvas or board, pen and ink, graphite, etc.), but throughout all of my pieces, I try to capture more than just a representation of the physical. I try to paint what is below the surface, the emotions, the secrets, the soul of the subject, and to use whatever is going on around or inside me to create something that is not just a pretty picture.