About the Mural:
This collaborative mural was an idea that came to us through conversations about referencing figures from AP news sources and deconstructing them using our current visual language. The figures we chose to reference are characters in modern day dramas and current events such as riots, protests, and urban warfare. For this reason they intentionally express a sense of unrest. We singled these figures out in order to study their expressions. We also abstracted their space in order to decontextualize the stories they were in so the focus would become more about a human experience instead of a political one. Compositionally speaking, we wanted to create a sense of suspended motion which reminds us of the stylized constructs of the old master renaissance painters. With that in mind we gathered and selected at random the most striking images to us in current news.
Sam sketched the chosen figures and I created a loose composition for the wall. We then brought the visual ingredients of these different dramas happening all over the world into one seamless and cohesive picture plane. We intentionally left room for improvisation which is a key element in the type of painting we do. In doing so we allowed ourselves opportunity to discover new process and expressions through color, linear deconstructing and gestural marks. Techniques we employed through the mural included fatcap mark-making which we consider our contemporary “brush stroke”. We set out to bridge various forms of fine art painting, and graffiti in attempt to capture our interpretation of modern day drama.
