This piece came out of an interest with the human body and the contrast of this organic form against the rigid structures humans have built around themselves.
The course which this piece was created for was an introduction to the theory behind art, and evoked questions such as "What does making Art really mean?" Through this theoretical lens I became really interested with the relationship between an Artist, the act of making, and the materials which are used. I looked at works of the abstract expressionist era; violent encounters with paint, to artists such as Ana Mendieta who used their own bodies as a direct conduit for artwork. The meditative work of Agnes Martin interested me in the grid as a source of order, representative of this kind of systemic society we find ourselves in today. Through these lenses I decided to create this piece; the result of me attempting to paint a series of straight lines using only my fingernail dipped in acrylic paint. This painting was a research project; an inquiry into how the movement of a human art in a repeated fashion can be visualized. The result is less of a grid, and more of an organic form, recalling tree bark. Researching and creating this piece has given me inspiration to pursue these relationships further in my future work.
An interesting "artifact" of this painting was the erosion of my fingernail. I am very interested in this idea of bodily sacrifice in exchange for the act of creating art.