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Benjamin Giachetti

from Ice Cream Social - EWU Art BFA Exhibition

from Ice Cream Social - EWU Art BFA Exhibition, page 40

Elyse Sawyer

Artmaking is like a journey towards a different world at this point in my life while keeping the childhood dream of finding another reality. Like art, music puts me in a settled state, but it’s also a way to move towards a world that I can see marks for itself and to share with others. I’ve been intrigued with visuals that depict what can be natural but would be beyond our perception of reality - meaning that there has to be something that can open towards other possibilities of looking at my surroundings or an object. Abstract art can be a way to discover a part of yourself that cannot be easily found, but it can manifest itself through the work. The process of creating the abstract can feel like child’s play: the idea of having something that can’t grow old, or can never change.

The experience of just working with art or just watching the work manifest its surprises was enthralling and engaging to see all the materials come together. Using acrylics tends to stand out with their bold colors that I have learned to not blend when they’re on the canvas, and it opened to more possibilities to apply other substances to the paint. Recently I’ve been engaged with the study of fluid paint introducing an element of randomness and chaos to my approach. Aside from just painting, I’ve been engaged with how the use of digital resources like Adobe photoshop benefits my practice even further - bends more of what was seen by transforming the images taken into what can’t be seen in our world; the Waterworks series are montaged-photographs that are reminiscent to the fluid poor techniques I used in some of my paintings, constructing them using Adobe Photoshop for cutting and blending the images into which way I see fit.