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I have loved art my entire life, though I have not made the best use of my talent for it. I drew frequently and well as a child, however, I did not hone my skills throughout the majority of my teenage years. Although I did not draw much during these years, I created a vast array of detailed origami sculptures. During my first year at college, I enrolled in a drawing course and rekindled my passion for visual art. I have been drawing, and later painting, ever since. My priorities for this course are firstly to learn how to work with oils, and secondly to further find my voice as an artist.

I am not thoroughly familiar with the work of any 21st century visual artists, however, some of my favorite visual artists include Picasso, Magritte, Dali, Van Gogh, Munch, Turner, & Michelangelo.

Art can evoke all types of emotion, and it can resonate differently among different people. Art is sometimes used to portray or commemorate the emotions of the artist about the events taking place around them - Picasso's Guernica depicted the chaotic horror of the destruction of the city, Turner's Slave Ship depicted his sorrow at the suffering resulting from the slave trade, Delacroix's Liberty Leading the People celebrated the revolution that took place the same year. Similarly, art can be created to portray or commemorate events of the past, that the artist may have experienced or may have not. Art is expression, and it can be expressing emotion about things that are happening, or things that have already happened.

Artists possess a responsibility to only one person, and that is themselves. That singular responsibility is to remain true to the expression of their own thoughts and feelings, and to preserve the authenticity of their voice.

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This piece was a digital art I made in summer. I have been drawing since young. Due to my Design major background, I focus more on digital photo art. I explore a lot about emotions, feelings, and the mental world. I have never worked with oil paint, so I'm so excited to learn this new medium.
One artist that represents our current times is Yayoi Kusama. Her art explores self-representation, psychological, and sexual themes. History paintings are usually inspired by political and religious. It shows the current society's understanding of a specific history, no matter it's the most accurate or not. It could also be showing the present world's phenomenon by using a historical event. While the meaning of making NOWstory painting is more straightforward by the image depicted.

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This is a piece I made for my Painting and Mark making class. It is part of a 3 piece series regarding homelessness in cities. This 3x3 ft piece was about city councils installing hostile architecture, often to prevent homeless people from resting in certain areas. I have enjoyed drawing for as long as I can remember, but I started trying to seriously learn the principles and fundamentals of art during the latter half of highschool. A lot of my art is stylized and simple, as my drawings seem to lean more to the cartoony side. Most of my art experience has been on drawing, however I have recently adventured to watercolors, acrylics, and digital painting. I have no experience in oil colors, but am excited to learn the medium, as I want to broaden my art skills. Something I would like to focus on this semester is to understand how to use oil paints and how to use it to convey my ideas. I would also like to paint more from observation and sharpen my art skills in general.

A contemporary artist whos work caught my eye is Jordan Casteel. Her art focuses on painting black people in ways that contradict society's notions of them. Her pieces are commentary on how black people are often criminalized and sexualized and works to get rid of such stigma by painting them in a different light. Her paintings aim to bring more visibility on black people's lives, showing their day to day lives as regular people. History paintings aim more on describing past events. History paintings were also often more religious and had different standards. NOWstory paintings can provide more commentary on today's events, along with having lots of variety.

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1. This is a piece I did a few months ago with an extra canvas I found (currently untitled). I’ve been doing art for as long as I can remember, but started taking art classes in high school and am now a double major in Art and Psychology, pursuing a career in art therapy. I do mostly drawing/painting but I’ve gotten more into photography in the past year or so. One thing I’d like to focus on this semester is getting a solid grasp on the techniques of oil (I’ve only ever worked with oils once) as well as develop a greater body of work.

2. One contemporary artist who I feels work represents our current time is Alexandre Farto (Vhils). Vhils is a Portuguese artist who cuts up billboards and advertising posters into portraits of the people and landscapes that make up those urban landscapes. I think his work is a representation of the media and how it tends to fuse with people’s sense of self in current times. I feel that history paintings are about analyzing past realities whereas now story paintings are a representation and accumulation of what is going on in the now. There is a specific responsibility in both types of work however, to try and authentically represent the subject at hand.

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This is my junior show piece, Mi Maya. This was one of the biggest pieces I’ve ever worked on. It is 6 x 6 ft. The physical engagement I had with the piece was both annoying and enjoyable. From this experience I began the torture of desring to paint big. With this piece it was also the start of a change in process on how I approach my work. I started off with this piece with a lot of writings and  multiple digital sketches until I began to put acrylic on canvas. I found this method to be easy and helpful in allowing ideas to flow and seek out an image I like.

For this class, I want to further my understanding of oil painting. I’ve taken oil painting in the previous fall semester. Online and at home….I’ve been intimate with my toxics projects. But a technique I want to build upon is the grisaille method and to build texture with impasto. The grasialle was introduced for one unit but I didn’t continue with the method. As for subject, concept, style, well I want to really use this class to experiment and try harder with my pieces. Some of my work has an influence from Japanese culture, my oil painting finals were sci fi themed, and historic charged pieces are something I’m still trying to tackle. But the execution is what I want to work on so the theme can get across.

Marc Bradford is an artist that comes to mind as a now story artist.  I was able to see one of his pieces in person, 150 Portrait Tone. The texture and peeled surface, the imprinted text, and the message was very powerful. The painting was inspired by a fatal shooting of Philandro Castilo in 2016. While it is beautiful, it still holds a message and a very relevant reminder of police shootings of the black community. The creation of Nowstory paintings, hold and will hold relevance for the years to come if they are on a prevalent and ongoing issue. There are many many things that can be said about our current times. About now.

The responses to Nowpaintings are one a different level with social media giving access to wider audiences and their responses. The multiple perspectives and interpretation of an artist doesn’t have a controlled space for their reactions. But that is the role of an artist. We must accept all the positive reactions and all the potential negative reactions. We choose to make the pieces we make, so their existence is our responsibility.

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My piece is titled Recital and I made it last semester in Hybrid Painting 308. It is a photocopy transfer of my sheet music in chronological/skill level order with acrylic paintings of myself over it.

I am a senior Art major, IES minor at Chapman and I want to teach art for grades k-12. If I teach a single subject it will probably be photography or painting. I have done art classes throughout all of my education and in my free time regularly. I would like to focus on layering this semester and exploring the new medium of oil painting - how it dries, the color variations, blending.

Sofia introduced me to the contemporary artist Jordan Casteel. I noticed the subject matter of children, humanity, and equity throughouat their work. The painting Royal, Oil on canvas, 78x60 in, 2021 was so interesting but also haunting for me, because it is the first painting I have ever seen of someone from the pandemic. I have never seen a person wearing a mask in a painting before and it really makes our current time feel real.

In making a NOWStory paintings it is important to consider history - there is no now story without history. History paintings must be done very carefully and the artist must take responsibility in considering all possible reactions (negative or positive) to their work. It is important to understand that people could potentially have a negative reaction to your artwork. I believe the artist is responsible for all reactions but it is up to them whether or not they feel the need to apologize/take accountability. Example: if the work was intentionally controversial they may chose not to.

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This is a piece that I created for my advanced drawing class, it was inspired mostly by procrastination on one of the projects, but in that desperation I found a new way to come up with inspiration for art. I was working on this piece out on the balcony of my apartment at night and when I was just staring into space, trying to come up with an idea, I started watching the clouds pass by. I actually ended up seeing this image in the clouds and took some liberties from that point to create the final piece.
I've been drawing my whole life, though my exploration into paints is relatively new for me. Art is something I've always been passionate about, though I've had a bit of an art block for the last few years. I'm minoring in art to allow for a reprieve from my econ classes as well as to force myself to continue practicing since it seems harder and harder to find time for it these days. I've had only a little experience with oils from oil painting 101, which went online before we switched out of greyscale. I am very excited to learn more about oils since most of my favorite artists are oil painters. I would love to learn more about the use of color with oils and to explore the style of romanticism. One of my favorite artists is Albert Bierstadt or honestly anyone from the Hudson River School movement and I would love to emulate that style so that I can truly capture and emphasize the beauty of the world around me.
A contemporary artist that inspires me is Elly Smallwood, who primarily works with oil to create intimate portraits of feminine bodies. Her style draws from the old masters while depicting the human body in a way that is simultaneously soft and jarring. She uses huge canvases to depict the female form and often paints women in explicit LGBTQ+ relationships, which is a strong deviation from the subjects in the renaissance style that influenced her work. She takes responsibility for her work by creating the media representation that was missing in classical painting, drawing inspiration from the woman she loves. Many history paintings were bound by strict societal pressures, often focusing on learning technique over capturing a scene purely to memorialize the beauty of the things that you love. Creating NOWpaintngs allows artists to use those techniques to push the boundaries, to relish in developing a unique style, to capture passion on canvas in whatever way that suits them.

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I made this piece for Advanced Drawing last semester; it’s a series of detail shots of traditional costumes spanning from Central Europe to Central Asia. I’m fascinated with traditional costumes and how they represent cultural identity and history. I have been making art for as long as I can remember, but after striving for photorealism for so long, I started to feel that the art I made was extremely shallow and surface-level. Today, I want my pieces to have more meaning than just being impressive-looking objects, and I want to continue to work on choosing meaningful subject matter in this class.

A contemporary artist whose work really spoke to me is Jenny Yurshansky. Through her work, she discusses themes of otherness, displacement, history, and culture informed by her identity as a Jewish refugee from Soviet-era Moldova. The way she explores her and her family’s place in the complicated web of history, culture, and ethnicity by using powerful cultural symbols was extremely compelling and personal to me. I think that to make history paintings is to put yourself in the mindset of a historical period, but to make NOWstory paintings is to comment on today’s cultural landscape with the historical context in mind. I believe we are responsible for being aware of historical context and how history has shaped our society today.

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This piece is one that I created for a class I took last semester. I have been in love with creating art my entire life. Throughout my childhood I was always drawing, but I ventured into painting in high school and from there I explored many different mediums. This summer I even started creating some commissions for clients at a store my friend owns, so I am getting a little more experience working with clients as well as creating a piece that they will enjoy. I have never worked with oil paints before so I'll have a lot to learn in this class but I'm excited to get started and learn to work with a new medium.
One contemporary artist who’s work I have always enjoyed is Kehinde Wiley. He was the artist who created the portrait of Barack Obama. I think that his art does represent our current time because much of his work blurs the boundaries between traditional and contemporary modes of representation and the portrayal of masculinity and physicality as it pertains to the view of the subjects in his paintings, which is often black young men. Many of his paintings juxtapose the old and new. Often he will be inspired by old classical European paintings of royalty and people of power, but he will replace the old white men and place the young black men in the position of power. This can bring to light lots of issues in society today. Many history paintings were made with inspiration that's based mostly around religion, but nowstory paintings often try and educate the viewers on the world and what’s happening all around us.

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This was a part of my final from Painting and Mark Making (last semester). The three part series was called Light and Shadow which was composed of a “regular” canvas (earth), a canvas of body (water), and a canvas of shoes (fire/soul/sol). The background (air) is my bedroom wall which I painted in the beginning of quarantine, symbolic to Van Gogh painting Starry Night in the Saint Paul asylum, looking at the world though iron bars. The rest was an intersection of me and my relationship to the universe. I love art because it’s created through the perspective of the eyes and brain of each individual.  My work is mainly focused around three things: my Van Gogh obsession, linking conscious to unconscious, and attempting to find the meaning of life. This semester I would like to continue to expand on my big question themes of life and the self, and how they intertwine. Also, I’d like to figure out the flow of how to paint through the lens of love.

Jerry Wilkerson was an artist who specialized in pointillism paintings which represents our current time, since pointillism is quite symbolic in my opinion. The idea of insignificant dots (representing each individual human) creating a significant whole (the universe) fascinates me. As the human race expands, so does knowledge, so does art, so does everything. The dots keep expanding. History paintings used to be centered around religion and the higher classes, yet NOWstory paintings are uncentered and accessible to most with the internet. Oils and watercolors were generally only  accepted and only accessible by the wealthy, yet NOWpaintings can be of anything, they can be finger paintings with acrylic or mud, paintings of poetry and collages and everything the mind can create. The one responsibility I can imagine up  is to “do,” since my definition of art is creating something out of nothing.

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I don't have a title for this painting, but this was made about 2 summers ago, and it was one of my first paintings. When I finished it, I remember feeling very accomplished and strong for doing this. I enjoyed painting it. The inspiration came from a trip to Scotland to see my brothers college. The Scottish flag is in the back, but the added part is the leading abstract heart. The history of Scotland is very old, and they have seen many battles. It was an allusion to Scotland and what I enjoyed about my trip to see my brothers lifestyle.

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This piece is a commission that I just completed recently (it's the first I've ever done). I've taken art really seriously since I was young but didn't really come into my own until I was 18. I've only ever done two oil paintings and I really want to explore my work in this new medium. I feel like working in oils will give me time to flesh out my ideas and try new techniques that I hadn't thought about incorporating before.

I think that Kevin Beasley is a contemporary artist that well represents our current time. He takes a more abstract and sculptural approach to address social issues while tying them into historical contexts. He also incorporates himself and others into these pieces, increasing the relativity of his work to himself and others that look like him. Making history paintings focus on evaluating history through the current state of the world's lens. Making nowstory paintings is evaluating the current state of the world through a historical lens, both doing so in an ethical and morally responsible way.

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I have been painting and drawing for a long time. I started to fall in love with ceramics. Oil has always been a medium that I struggle with. I am excited to learn more about the different techniques since oil is so much more about layering.
One artist that I came upon recently is Takashi Murakami. His work challenges ideas in the world of art itself. He chooses to focus on taking down the social and economical hierarchy that the West has created in the art world.