Tight Squeeze

Street Artist in Bologna 

Photo of the Madonna I 

Study or Jackie

 This work was my first opportunity to paint from a live model. I stressed over painting a woman nude for weeks, yet when the day came around, I realized there was no need. There was no judgment awkwardness and nothing immoral. This experience was a turning point for my views on women and my views of myself.

Nude Portrait Study I

I wanted this work to depict the feeling of being pulled in different directions physically, mentally, and emotionally. With a packed workload on my plate, I often feel like I'm going back and forth from thing to thing and always something to do. I wanted to be able to capture the feeling of being overwhelmed and the stress and confusion that comes with it. I am incredibly inspired by Egon Schiele’s distorted forms and how they can tell a story. I often found myself thinking of him while creating this work. I find it comforting that others enjoy his work even though it is disturbing and encourages me to create things even though they may not be ‘pretty’. 

  

Pushed and Pulled

Busy Head” was created during a time of great confusion and stress. My grandfather and a close family friend had both recently passed from cancer, while my mother had just been diagnosed with the same disease. I was away at school while most of this was going on, and I felt guilty for not being home. I tried to make my time away from home worth it, throwing myself head-deep into my studies. I figured if I couldn't be home to take care of my friends and family, I could at least try to make them proud of me. I took extra classes, spent hours studying a day, and got disappointed by any grade lower than 95%. I drove myself mad. I was exhausted and ran myself too thin. I wanted to be able to visually capture this time in my life in order to process and move past it, thus creating this work. 
  
  

Busy Head

For this work, I wanted to play with style and subject matter. I took Vincent Van Gogh's painting Skull of a Skeleton with Burning Cigarette and remade it in the style of Jean Micheal Basquiat 

If Jean Met Vincent 

Sunny Days

Purple Dae

Boy with Stripes 

 ‘Patchwork’ is a self-portrait comprised of four different papers collaged together. I drew the portrait on each of these materials before tearing them apart and piecing all the sections back together. I wanted to represent the complexity of personalities and how there can be many different areas of one's self, 

charcoal, graphite pencil, conte, various types of collaged paper 

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Kelsey Loucks