Project 13: Soar

When I took this picture, I was looking over the Geneva Lake at a swan running on water, reflecting on my high school graduation. I had always felt out of place in Switzerland, and that day especially I experienced a strong pull towards new beginnings.

Even though the swan that I originally observed may have transformed into a goose, it is now centered, and confident. I feel that I am in the right place, a place that equally challenges me and allows me to be confident enough to explore my potential and listen to my heart.

The goose will continue on running, and learning, forever. It will remain sincere to others and to oneself. 

Project 12.2: Seem

The water and the sky make mountains.

The sky and the mountains make the water. The water and the mountains make the sky.

Each part makes a whole. Every element is essential and makes up all the other elements. The individuality of all elements is an illusion, they cannot be separated. 

Project 12.1: The Trumpet Player

Project 11: Tonic

Sitting by the water on a sunny day revitalizes me...

Summer water streams
Through pigmented airy dreams
Every shadow seems

Peter S. Quinn

Project 10: Overlook, Overhear

In California, if you do not look, you will not find. During the week of Spring Break, I traveled to Los Angeles. I took in the colorful life of Venice Beach and strolled along the Santa Monica pier. 

As I walked on the board walk one day, a walkie-talkie caught my attention. It was attached to a piece or cardboard amidst some paintings, but with no person near it. As I came closer, I distinguished a voice coming from within. In a brisk tone, it was telling me to turn around and walk to the tower that was behind me.

The tower was in fact an artist's studio, and the walkie-talkie was his voice transmitted from the window. He had seen us approaching his device, and we had overheard his attempt at communication.

http://www.dcastroarts.com/

Project 9: Night

I wanted to create a landscape that changed within itself, that was stark and unexpected like every beautiful sunset. Halfway through the painting, I decided that I would wrap it and make it a source of light. This animated the image. When the lamp is off, it is night.

I enjoyed turning the image inside out because it gave an unexpected transparency and it only showed the bottom brush strokes. The shadow of the lamp was also a discovery that has inspired me to experiment more with light in the future.


Between two hills 

The old town stands.
The houses loom 

And the roofs and trees 

And the dusk and the dark, 

The damp and the dew 

Are there.

The prayers are said 

And the people rest 

For sleep is there 

And the touch of dreams 

Is over all.

- Carl Sandburg

Project 8: Tree

Exploration of Watercolor, starting with the abstract and transitioning to the human form. 

Tree at my window, window tree,
My sash is lowered when night comes on;
But let there never be curtain drawn
Between you and me.

Vague dream head lifted out of the ground,
And thing next most diffuse to cloud,
Not all your light tongues talking aloud
Could be profound.

But tree, I have seen you taken and tossed,
And if you have seen me when I slept,
You have seen me when I was taken and swept
And all but lost.

That day she put our heads together,
Fate had her imagination about her,
Your head so much concerned with outer,
Mine with inner, weather.

Robert Frost