THE ARTIST'S HAND
2016, acrylic on canvas, mounted on perspex
___ a commission ___
I have my mother's hands, and my grandmother's hands. I feel like I completely get people when I meet them and they have these deeply lined hands.
I initially got into painting hands when I was doing 'Mathematical Beauty' because I quickly needed a reference for my first painting assignment, and because of their relationship to our base 10 counting system. I became pretty obsessed afterwards.
I take hands as their own people, perpetrators of responsibility, as a set of eyes.
THE ARTIST'S HAND, sketched
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2017, A3, pencil on paper
JAMES' HANDS
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2017, finger painted acrylic and pencil on darkened gesso
Curated by Enrique Chagoya
Exhibited in InTransit, The 4th Annual Undergraduate Juried Exhibition
at the Stanford University Department of Art & Art History
James Mayclin lived next door to me in my freshman dorm Cedro-tisserie Chicken. I'd philosophise with him until the early hours of the morning in the hallways while doing problem sets.
I was astounded by the popping veins on his hands and how they carried magic so fluently to piano, to keyboard for coding, and to paper for maths.
Besides the gesso and some ghostly drafting of translucent greys, this was painted directly with my bare hands in a freshman dorm room 'studio'. My fingers blistered over contact with the canvas - a mark I thought was an honour to carry. Someone asked about my process at the exhibition and they remarked that the painting painted me as much as I painted it - and indeed I shed bits from my hand onto the surface.
Unfinished by a previous me's standards but now I think it looks pretty cool. It's wafty from up close and struck with graphite glimmers from the drafting stage.
close up on detail and a highkey shady pic of me with JAMES' HANDS at the exhibition.
SARAH + SARAH | Like Paper, Like Skin
2018, mechanical pencil on copy paper
A palm diptych for the couple who have allowed me and some friends to stay in their house in the Mission over the winter break 2017-2018, bless them.
In shock over their kindness, he replied, “Well, that’s just what life is about.”
SKIN
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2018, 8.5 x 11 inches, acrylics, wine, napkin, brown paper towel, plastic canvas packaging, on canvas.
I basically wanted to emulate first, the mix of colours that skin has underneath in layers, blue, red and green, and blended it together. I then blended the golden beige of my skin tone onto the still wet under-colours using the canvas wrapper as a palette.
By this stage I was getting increasingly wine drunk with Nathalyn.
I then used the wine soaked white napkin and wet brown paper to soak up wounds and emulate scabs, then I stuck and wrinkled the entire skin surface with the plastic film with the unmixed colours smeared onto the canvas. I started to feel like scratching the drying paint/skin on one corner too and reached underneath the plastic, like a hard to reach itch.
I took this with me as I moved out of Nathalyn's and onto the SS Maritol. It's pictured here on the ship floor.