McLeod,+Jerome

=QUARTER TWO=

"Gone"
This quater was more of an exploration of what I could do with the materials I currently have, than going ahead of myself explore more. So, after dwelling on it for many many days, I took the initiative to buy more canvas and to apply things there. In the end I achieved something that was more of what I had set to do in my mind, than what I could improvise in the process.

My peers and my teacher, Ms.Hull, told me that the canvas that I took apart has a very tribal feel. When they saw the canvas string/yarn it was more reminiscent of african mask motif, than anything I could think of. So when I was musing a paintings I was more inclined to do a painting that had a primitive feeling to it.

Along with canvases I stuck to using terra cotta clay and the canvas string. Manipulated by my hands, I first formed a face with the canvas string that wrapped into the same tribal mask form that one might expect an ancient Pueblian or a native Mayan might produce. I was quite proud of myself until I realized that there was a bonding that would need to go on so that I could keep the amazing mask on canvas.

I have had some amazing failures in my art career where I discovered how many mediums work with each other to make very cool effects. However, after pouring thick moist clay clumps over the delicate canvas string, I was suddenly at a loss for what I was do do next. So, I soaked the canvas for 2 days in water and emerged brand new with a damp canvas and string that had lost all signs of life and past vivaciousness. Everything was muddy and dead. But with help from Ms.Hull, I got the chance to use a 'dead' feeling to express the face I was trying to portray.

. The dead feeling here is translated by the lifelessness of the clay and the absence of eyeballs and the misshapen nature of the painting.



This painting I used for the Parsons' Challenge for my admissions to Parsons New School for design. Please visit my website to see my full portfolio and my other work.

"Rejection Spectrum"
As I continue to experiment on smaller canvases to develop mediums of my musings, I realized it would be important for me to apply some of my own technique onto a bigger context. This is the largest of my paintings and does not have a micro-specific meaning to it. As with most abstract art, the existing concept is portrayed through the lens of the artist. However, what I have painted is not by any means a portrayal. It can be closely defined as a manifestation of color and emotion. "Rejection Spectrum" is only the visual assumption of what color and emotion came to be on the canvas. However, I feel that I could name it several other things like: "Emotion as Movement" "Inclusion Exclusion" "The Rainbow Through the Rain" or simply: "Space" as the painting can mean several things among different perceptions.

However, you can look at some of my paintings as a Rorschach Ink Blot Test to indicate your own perspective. Meaning your perception is an indicator of the values you hold yourself. If you agree with "Emotion as Movement" it might mean that you link the significance of color to its indicative emotional properties. "Inclusion Exclusion" may mean that you see the diversity of colors present literally equate to a representation of many diversities; while the "X" distortion is a rejection of diversity from a certain perspective (lighten up). "The Rainbow Through the Rain" might mean you take things at almost face value and assume that the painting is a rainbow seen though the visual distortion of water. Space could mean that your ideas sweep over the big picture and can be general enough to define the painting as an image of space and the movement as the distortion of human perception in general. However, it is important to know there are many perceptions of the painting itself causing there to be a "Spectrum..." of observations, then the rejection expressed in the "X" formations being the literal tie back from the skiddish nature of the word spectrum.

[[image:DSC01622.JPG width="406" height="227"]] [[image:DSC01621.JPG width="314" height="287"]] "Baroque Shmaroque"
This piece is an reference to my imagination. When someone asked me what I was doing while I was forming this, I had a hard time trying to say if this was a painting or a sculpture. It is on canvas, but I can hardly just call it a painting. It is essentially both, but I simply cannot come to define the middle ground. This is canvas deconstructed to a string level. Unraveled. Basic.

The idea came from me sitting on a 7 hour long bus to Boston (mind you the trip SHOULD be 4 hours). I had bought some canvas with me because I wanted to visualize the raw canvas alone to see what a peice could become after manipulation. However, I seem to keep coming back to an idea that pictures are composed of fragments that together express a complete picture. Here again is manifestation of concept. Instead of manipulating the fabric as it was, I took it apart to its most basic parts. Canvas, molding paste, hot glue and watered down acrylic paint compose this.

This piece uncolored, immediately reminded me of a baroque rococo period wig. However, in my own abstract way, I used paint to distort and alter this image. I excessivly poured watered down paints and restyled the formulation may times before settling with this final image. Its name is from a conversation I had with myself when deciding how this would be perceived. Although it may not look very reminiscent of a wig now, but when you look hard enough, it does. So when I said: "It doesn't quite look like baroque." The painting responds in an unpretentious exhale of: "Baroque Smaroque."

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