Artist Statement

Gage Dunbar

For my sustained investigation, I focused on how to express people's thoughts, feelings, and in some cases mental disorders in not traditional ways. I wanted to create an image that someone would look at and understand what the person in the picture felt without having to create a blatantly obvious representation of the emotion. It was my goal to find out how to effectively determine what symbolism or other devices I could use to properly express what emotions a person feels, and how they show it to others or interpret it themselves. I went about my sustained investigation by doing minimal research into the emotion I was trying to represent, and I normally did this by looking up how certain people handle their own emotions or how they interpret what they are feeling themselves. I then try and work out and decide what is the best way to portray those feelings through my art. There are many different ways that I can use art to express these emotions, whether through the medium of the art, the style of art, or the color that I use. For example, the first work I did focused on depression. Instead of doing something as simple as drawing a portrait of a sad person, I chose to focus on how many people with depression do not outwardly show how they feel, but instead "put on a happy face" as they go out into the world. Furthermore, I used only cool colors to add value to the "sad" face, and warm colors to the "happy" face that is being manually painted on by the character in the picture. This is just one example of how I expressed human emotion in my art. I chose to do this project originally because portraiture is my favorite type of art. I enjoy the detailed work that can be put into a person's face but also the fluctuability of the human face, since every person looks different. My desire to work with portraits evolved into my desire to express human emotion. I wanted a wide rage of options to work with for my sustained investigation, and also things that could be open for interpretation and my own creativity. I thought that human emotion, something that varies greatly and has its own interpretation for each person. It is for these reasons that I happily chose the interpretation of human emotion for my sustained investigation.