The aim of this creative project was to explore the ideas of impermanence and transience through the lens of different, largely non-western cultural backgrounds, and to incorporate what I learned into my own work as a painter. As part of this, I focused on the materials, techniques, visual strategies, and philosophies that guided the creation of these works. The project consisted of a discrete research phase, during which time I gathered information and materials related to my topic, and a creation phase, when I focused largely on the production of oil paintings and ink paintings whose technique and/or subject matter pertained to impermanence. Research for the most part was conducted by utilizing online and physical collections of work to analyze the formal elements of the work along with the cultural context in which it was created. Ultimately the creative project resulted in a product of three oil paintings and five ink paintings.

Jake Hernandez grew up in Houston, Texas where his frequent visits to the Museum of Fine Arts introduced him to the works of Mark Rothko and Piet Mondrian. Inspired by these artist’s use of color, Hernandez has leveraged his own understanding of color theory and mathematics to explore the complexity of this element for his honors thesis. In Colored Squares I and II, Hernandez created a process of random color generation from a set of blue, red, and yellow pigments to explore color in the absence of human bias. Since artists' personal biases and inclinations towards color affect our exploration of this element, Hernandez wanted to eliminate these obstructions to investigate color to a much greater extent. In Colored Landscapes I, II, and III, Hernandez used the primaries again in a more expressive style. Drawing inspiration from his travels across Europe and North America, Hernandez created new landscapes all his own. These studies offer a substantiated argument for the limits of art itself, showing artists have only explored a very small fraction of art's possibilities and that more exploration can be done in color and the other elements of art.

This is a series of three paintings all composed with oil paint. This series offers a unique and thought-provoking perspective on gender roles and the male gaze and how they are used as forms of oppression. This series challenges traditional notions of gender and spark meaningful conversations about the ways in which society shapes and reinforces gender norms.

Chinese landscape painting has a long history and is one of the most practiced traditions in Chinese art. There are many different styles within this genre, from the larger and bold style of the Northern Song dynasty to the smaller, softer paintings of the Southern Song dynasty. Yang Yongliang is a contemporary Chinese artist that was born in 1980 in Shanghai, China. He was trained in traditional Chinese painting styles from a young age and, during his university schooling, he focused on digital art and graduated with a degree in Visual Communication. Yang combines these two distinct backgrounds in his art by creating pieces inspired by classical Chinese genres in a digital manner, using composite photographs. He creates different scenery by piecing small clips of pictures together to create one larger image. Yang takes the traditional style of work and changes it to comment on modern Chinese and global values. While many artists that focus on social or political messages create works that are not visually appealing, Yang has been able to create works that are powerful through their message while still being beautiful. Through his works, he successfully brings together both “New China” and “Old China” within every piece.

This creative project examines identity, autonomy, and social hierarchy by manipulating the traditions and iconography of female figural painting. Female identity and autonomy is often marked by a tense relationship between the self and the body. Socially acceptable self-expression of one's behavior, body, and desires is strictly regulated within a set of often paradoxical parameters that repress abject, 'animal' behaviors. This series of three paintings reacts to this culture of restraint and repression by exposing the body to nature once more, finding catharsis in annihilation and the destruction of boundaries between the Self and the Other. The human body is depicted as a host for animal life cycles, exploring the duality of creating and supporting life while simultaneously being destroyed. Animals that embody socially unacceptable behaviors are brought crashing back into the human form, reuniting the idealized, contrived female figure with an expressive, imperfect nature and sense of self. Hybridized animal-human relationships in the paintings break down the falsely hierarchical distinction between 'humans' and 'animals' that distances and privileges humanity from that which is considered primitive. By releasing the human body to the uncomplicated consumptive and reproductive forces of ‘trash’ animals in these paintings, the work challenges how the worth of existence is socially defined, instead affirming that all life has some inherent value distinct from its transactional worth to society at large. This celebration of the grotesque shakes off repressive social constructs, offering a unique form of catharsis and agency.