Jessica Cornford- BFA Painting and Drawing

   
Shown L-R: Dusk til Dawn,                       Time In a Bubble,                             Bugging Out

Artist Statement

A year ago, in June I went for a hike and took photos of the different creatures that I saw, as I typically do. That was where inspiration struck me and changed the course of my artwork for the foreseeable future. My concentration of choice is painting and drawing, although I also love to create multimedia works. The media represented in my BFA show are primarily oil paint, wood burning, and watercolor. I chose these mediums specifically because I feel it's easier to get hyper detailed (wood burning & oil paint) and bright fluid coloring (oil paint and watercolor) which are the two things I look for the most in my work.

My process is similar across media, I start with a light outline of my subject that takes me no longer than 10 minutes usually, and then I spend most of my time adding shadow and color where I want it. Woodburning is slightly different because there is no color I just add shadow by darkening the burns and using cross-hatching. I typically work on unsanded slabs of wood for oil painting, I think it adds to my pieces since I'm depicting animals and it's a natural element. Even though I don't sand the wood I will however put a base coat of Liquin Oil Medium down to prep the surface, so the paint doesn't soak into the wood as much. No matter what I'm trying to create I always use photo references to give my art a sense of realism.

The theme for my BFA show is all about finding beauty in animals who are typically viewed as ugly, undesirable or creepy by our society. I'm focusing on animals specifically as they've always been an area of interest for me. I used to be a conservational biology major, and I still enjoy learning about all different types of animal and plant species. This series was interesting for me create because in my research to find animals that are widely considered undesirable, I would often find animals on those lists that I personally felt were cute or charming. Some of these controversial animals being sphinx cats, aardvarks, mice, etc. For me the “ugly” creatures are more interesting to look at and work with. In this series I cover all different types of animals including insects, fish, mammals, amphibians, and invertebrates. The animal considered to be the ugliest of them all is by far the blob fish, which I did a two-sided piece for since I felt it was necessary to show what blob fish look like in water as opposed to the photo of them that gets circulated the most. The piece that started the whole series for me was “dusk till dawn” which is one of the first oil paintings I'd ever done. It was based off some photos I took of dusky slugs during the hike I mentioned at the start of this statement. I fell in love with this painting and the series grew from there slowly adding more and more animals to the list.

My final piece for my show is a twist on what I've done with my previous work in this series. It's titled “True Ugliness” and depicts a human form lurking in the shadows and blending with other top predators of the animal kingdom. With this piece rather than show humanity in a beautiful light I chose to show it's ugly and twisted nature that isn't always visible to the blind eye. The message is that creatures we consider to be hideous are often just misunderstood because of their looks and are unexpectedly docile by nature, whereas we humans tend to look at ourselves as if we're evolutionary perfection when it's humanity that has committed some of the most egregious acts of violence and mass destruction that this world has ever seen. This painting is meant to show that darker and ugly side of humanity. I wanted to have the figure look a little monstrous with all the claws and teeth coming out of it, and the colors from the figure spilling and blending into the darkness is meant to give it a surreal/nightmarish feeling.

My influences include art deco and art nouveau pieces, I really like Alphonse Mucha's line work and organic shapes/elements. I also find a lot of inspiration from animations from my childhood like Coraline, early 2000s Disney movies, and Studio Ghibli animations. A little bit of Mucha's influence can be seen specifically in my wood burning pieces “roly-camoly” and “I'm a star”. The way I do the line work for the flowers is very reminiscent of his work, mine just uses cross hatch shading whereas his work is completely colored. My piece “bugging out” is very similar to Coraline in the saturated colors I used, and the bugs are close in appearance to the bug furniture in the movie. I draw a lot of inspiration with my color palette from Studio Ghibli, I use a lot of bright saturated colors and include shiny and transparent subjects. My goal when doing this is to create a sense of whimsy and fun, something that makes people feel good when they look at it. I hope with this series people will take a second look at how they treat the animals they consider ugly and realize that just like any other creature on this planet they deserve love, respect and to be protected.