Tag: Autistic Artist

  • Getting The Vibe Right

    I like to compose works that invite the viewer to feel a certain essence from the piece. For example, a playful, eerie, or soft and relaxed vibe. That is the first thing I want someone to say about the piece before they dissect it further. If I fail to communicate that, then I have failed with the piece. The whole thing falls apart. The artwork is total garbage.

    Over the summer, one of the big things I want to work on is effective communication. So hopefully, keep the conversation on topic. My work is more about evoking the feelings I feel. It really confuses me when a different emotion comes up. It annoys me. So that just means I have to get better at creating the right stimulus for the intended reaction. Which just means understanding design principles and manipulating them to achieve the outcome I want. Instead of wasting away and watching brain rot, I’ll gladly spend my time studying art.

    With the image I am using today, I was going for something that felt eerie, somewhat surreal, keeping it to a simple design and color palette. One of the design elements I was using was scale. For instance, to give a sense of distance between the bird and the tree, and to enunciate the important shapes. I used orange-red against the blue to really direct the eyes.

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    Maybe I am just a control freak, or autism doesn’t allow me to see a different perspective because of black and white thinking…

    I really want people to see the work as I see it.

  • Painting From Life

    Zoning Out With Oil Paint

    I decided to go outside and meet some people. We met to paint the surroundings. I went off to a shady spot with a bunch of picnic tables and eyed an interesting composition of trees. It was an enjoyable day, but it was hot.

    Translating the outside world onto a canvas is very spiritual. Forming the shapes and lines in my head, bringing out the colors I feel are shining through the subject, and making them subtly show through the assorted color gradations. It takes my mind to weird places. I lock in, ignore my surroundings, and focus entirely on the subject. I cannot hear what is around me. I am in a trance. Not even realizing that an hour has passed. It is weird, but strangely very calming. What I need after a stressful phone call and doctor visits. Working in this state, I still form a picture. The shapes are abstracted, but there is movement. The final image is still formed.

    The composition I picked had three trees in front of a wooded area made of bushes and trees, but leaves made up most of the backdrop. Oil paint was definitely the medium to choose. The trees’ grey bark leaned red in hue, a stark difference to the green leaves in shadow. It was interesting to look at.

    To add a bit of stress to the mix. I limit it to one or two brushes. Adds a bit of chaos. crashing into each other as they mix on the palette, the colors changing unpredictably as I paint. Keeping grounded, as I must think carefully for each brushstroke, or it will turn into mud.

    In the end, I am relaxed. I completed something, and I am proud. I view it as a portal to how my brain thinks. That somehow, in my process, I feel this calmness that takes over. It feels like I am dancing. Nothing exists till I am snapped right back into reality.

  • DREAMING

    Last summer in Delaware. It is bittersweet. But everyone is leaving, and so am I. Gotta grow up and spread my wings someday. It is not like I am going far, just traveling on I-95 to get to Philly. It is not like I can just take SEPTA down for a visit with family. I will be taking advantage of my time at Temple to make a name for myself. At what, I don’t know yet. Trying to manifest something art-world related.

    In this three-part collage series, I have been doing (I’m going to start the third one this week). Going for a dreamlike movement. A physical look into my mind as I am meditating. As I prepare for a gigantic step in my life. Then I ground myself as I try to focus on my goal. Which is getting into the University of Pennsylvania’s History of Art Master’s program. But I know I need to take my time and chill. That is what these pieces are about: slowing down, falling asleep, and dreaming.

    Recently, I have been trying to incorporate some visual movement in my pieces. A collage I created not long ago is an example of my trying to convey hyper-energy. Right now, with these two collages and the future third one, the goal is to show movement that is slow to the viewer.

    I am trying to take things slow because I want to enjoy my time. That keeps me chill, but still, apart from me wanting to show off that I am working hard, I don’t want to drown in this capitalist world. Like the tortoise wins the race, but society treats young adults like they have to be the hare.

  • Getting To Know Philly

    It is a lot of walking

    The city of Philadelphia has a lot to offer and, coming from a train ride away from northern Delaware, it is a city that I would visit for Phillies games and museum trips. But now, in three and a half months, I will be moving to go to Temple to hopefully get my degree in visual studies at Tyler.

    With being on the autism spectrum, it is important I prepare and get used to how things work. So it is not a shock to my system like my first try. With not being able to drive. (Thank God!) Learning how SEPTA works is pretty important, but it was not too hard.

    Really, I chose to go to Temple and Philly in general because of the local art and DIY scene.

    More of what I want to do is in Philadelphia.

    The walks have been lovely. Been taking in the different architecture. I have just been exploring and drawing in the parks.

    Just getting use to the city.

  • My Brain And Art

    my autistic brain having a special interest in art

    I would say modern to contemporary art is a special interest of mine. It has affected my life choices. For instance, the path I chose for my college education. There are going to be visual studies at Temple this fall.

    How has it affected me consuming art?

    I get totally obsessed. I mean I made this blog to talk about it. Not only do I have to know the history, but also how it was made, and I try to recreate it by learning the techniques in my own art. It keeps me up at night. I can spend hours just sucking in a piece trying to analyze the tiniest sections. It is my life. Like I love learning about non-representational art. I am a very design-oriented person, and I can really spend hours researching a piece.

    Some things I can go on about are the impressionist being inspired by Spanish painters for their looser style. I can go on and on about Marcel Duchamp and dadaism. Currently, they are hyper fixated on dadaism right now, for instance. Talk about the history of college art. There is a lot.

    I cannot be normal when I see an artist’s piece I have been studying, because I get really excited about it. I will talk my mouth off if I get the chance to talk about a movement I have been studying. It can get exhausting because of how much it consumes me. That is why I say it is a special interest, because of how much it affects my life. At least it gives me a ton of inspiration.

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  • Sensory Input and Collage Art

     am never satisfied with a digital piece of. It never feels finished and I never feel accomplished. I do not find it that fun.

    I need to feel the art supplies. I need that sense of “oh shit I fucked up” to then layer about stuff to fix it. The smell of the paint and ink. Watching the ink flow all around the paper. Just feeling the material in my hand and making something gives me considerable pride. I sensory seek with my art.

    That is why I love college, because I can do weird shit. Add some weird textured paper or using some cardboard I found lying around. Mixing mediums to make something dope. It is freeing. I can get sensory satisfaction. Art is a sensory experience for me, and I cannot get that with digital art. For example, throwing down a matte medium and pressing paper into each other. The medium dry in my hand and peel it off. Just another thing apart from the experience. Making my collage art is about the experience of letting out a feeling.

    I crave the tactile nature of traditional art.

    Messing with materials is a big stress relief and I wish I could get that feeling by working in Clip Studio or Photoshop. It just does not fill the void why I make art. 

    I either make an abstract piece or I go representational. It is what is best for capturing what is going on inside my head and I need different textures to make my point.