JANINE MAO
My project is an art voyage of exploration and discovery. By trying and learning different art mediums and styles, my own preferences and strengths are evolving. For example, one day, I would be painting, and another day, doing flower arrangement, and unlike others, my project has no fixed theme, drifting from smooth, graceful oceans one day to energetic, joyful sketches of mythical creatures another day.
One might ask, why would I choose such a project when I could be refining and making beautiful art? If I just chose one thing to be good at, it would be much more productive. After thinking awhile, I found two responses to this idea:
First, the knowledge of the unknown beckons to me and I simply cannot watch something without wanting to know the mechanics of it; how it works, how it’s made and the concept of it. To me, the temptation in the satisfied feeling one experiences upon understanding is one of the greatest aspects of life, and I would like to feel that same joy in understanding art. However, one cannot truly understand something by learning just one aspect; they have to tackle the topic from all sides, as I do when I learn different mediums and styles.
Second, I’m not naturally talented in art, so even if I settled down and refined an art style, I highly doubt I would be able to make something truly beautiful. At first, I always wondered why. Why couldn’t I capture that essence of the thing I was drawing? Why did my acrylic painting look so rough? And then I realized, because I did not truly know the meaning of art. I did not feel art’s spirit. I thought that if you just decide to paint some symbols on a piece of cardboard it was art. I did not understand, so I set on a quest to understand my Exploration Project.
During this journey, I had to overcome a lot of difficulties. But, my greatest challenge was my own view that I have an inability to do good art. My inner critic often told me that was not really that good at any medium, so it was really hard for me to produce work of quality. Fortunately, after long technique and research lessons combined with a lot of patience from both me and Mrs.Cragg, my art teacher, I was able to make the product somewhat acceptable, which was both a joy and relief.
Regarding challenges, I also had a few successes. Of which my greatest success was managing to push through the tougher mediums that required patience (which I sometimes do not have a lot of) even when I really didn’t want to. Thankfully, I had a lot of invisible support from artists that inspired me perhaps without realizing it, including:
Katie Jobling, a painter, I studied Katie’s videos in learning how to paint with acrylics, and was inspired by her patient layers of color.
Xinzi Zheng, my classmate and a talented illustrator: I watched Xinzi draw beautiful designs and lively characters, and I was inspired by the unique, spirited style her drawings withheld.
Rebecca Cragg, a multi-focus artist and my art teacher: Mrs.Cragg taught me many lessons on Ikebana and the sense of flow in artwork, inspiring my own artwork to have more flow and direction.
Ken Sugimori, game designer: Ken Sugimori was the character designer for many pokemon, and I was inspired by his limitless creativity and how well he blended the parts of the pokemon into one, themed character.
Molly Wang, calligrapher: Molly’s beautiful and clean strokes could not be any more different from my messy headache-bringing handwriting, but with her guidance, I managed to learn some of the patience and elegance of calligraphy. I was inspired by the cleanliness of her strokes and how she could have the patience to write thousands of beautiful characters at once.
The Love Nikki Design Team: an anonymous team of dress designers. I was inspired by the enthusiasm and detail in the Love Nikki Dress Design style and loved how each individual dress was well-characterized and how much effort was clearly put into all the little details and flow of the fabric.
Overall, I hope viewers experience, through the progression of the technique in my pieces, the story of my learning and the development of one’s own artist identity. Sometimes, it was really hard, and my artist style was pulled this way and that, always changing as I found more and more artists and mediums that I modeled my work after. I hope they experience this because I hope that they too can be inspired to find their own style as well.
As an artist, I would like to tell the world that the feeling of learning something is the best feeling in the whole world, and even if they are not good at art, they can still have fun in art. To draw, you have to be both firm and free, which means coming to terms that even if you mess up on your art, you can still make it beautiful. In order to find yourself, you have to accept yourself and allow yourself to be who you are in a way that can express a lesson to others. Art is not just painting random things on an object and calling it art, it is interpreting the deep meaning behind a piece and expressing