I am SO pleased to have been awarded the College Advisory Board Graduate Student Grant by the Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters College!
In between holidays and the semester wrapping up, I failed to share this wonderful news.
The grant was awarded to support a move from traditional, well-crafted oil glaze paintings to incorporating a photo-based process, cyanotype, into my painting practice. Having honed my foundational skills in representational oil painting using historic materials and methods, I entered the MFA program at FAU with the intention to expand my practice and explore and experiment with alternative approaches. Researching alternative methods to image making, I realized that cyanotypes offered a color parallel to the blue underpainting in my current body of work. This visual connection precipitated the awareness that I could employ cyanotypes in much the same way as my underpainting but that it would open my practice to new possibilities. After exposing an image to cotton canvas, the cyanotype will be stretched onto wood, coated with clear gesso and a fully rendered oil painting will peak through the intense blue hues.
I can't wait to share some of my experimentation with you all in the coming months.
You can check out my name as well as a few of my Graduate colleagues here!