Painting

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://hdl.handle.net/10217/180171

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Now showing 1 - 20 of 93

Open Access
Hazel Shelton: capstone
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2025) Shelton, Hazel, artist
The artist's statement: I make paintings of landscapes and the beings that inhabit them. I am inspired by dreams, almost-too-close observations of the world around me, weird animals, the unloved and weird and otherwise underappreciated (be it worms or people), and multispecies theory. My paintings are celebrations of the sentience of their inhabitants and how our proximity to them changes us. They are meditations on questions like what might happen if we spend time close to a particularly insightful Gila monster – even if she never shares what she knows. As I paint, I am interested in creating feelings that defy easy categorization. At the simplest level, I invite strangeness. While strangeness can feel uncomfortable, I have found it also pairs well with good humor and curiosity. I approach painting with an interest in the materials I am using, constantly experimenting with techniques and recognizing the materials' agency as I work with – and sometimes against – them. I love the endless approaches you can take with oil paint, and how it invites chaos at every turn. With enough solvent, thick paint becomes fractals that slip unpredictably down the face of the canvas. Inevitably, the paint finds its way onto surfaces that have never been close to a palette. Oil paint creates a web of mess that offers only one solution: keep painting.
Open Access
Tristin Dorsey: capstone
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2025) Dorsey, Tristin, artist
The artist's statement: I am not interested in the fixed singularity of any work. I morph and change my paintings throughout the process of creation as well as in the installation of the work itself. Because my work consists of a multitude of fragments, I install the paintings in different compositions, eliciting a malleability and responsiveness that is not typical of stretched canvas, collaged, or otherwise traditional paintings; Whether they are installed as a formal composition on the wall, rolled up and displayed (concealing the painted surface), or layered on the ground. The paint itself is stuck but given mobility, it changes, reacts, no longer a fixed image-serving material. This body of work begins with large dropcloth canvases, which I tear into panels or fragments. These canvas fragments are worked, peeled apart, worked and layered again, eventually forming a collection. Each time I exhume a panel from the stack, it becomes both a brand new object and one that bears its own past. The canvas fragments hold onto the paint from the painting before and the painting after; left behind are echoes of these interactions. Aesthetically resulting in an archeology-like reframing of historical abstract lineages. The visual database of abstraction as material becomes an object dug up and reprocessed, like a corpse or a long forgotten tool. The outcome is a deeply layered and thick amalgamation of paint as material, not as image; An examination of the objecthood, ontology, and materiality of paint. I am exploring the history of abstraction, its context today as an institutionally upheld but often gatekept art form, and furthering it along through experimental methods and archeological practices. I am working to explore the energy that a painting holds as an object, its contextual weight, and its connotation as a medium rather than for imagery purposes. The work is an archive of continuous labor and practice.
Open Access
Gilmer Whitley: capstone
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2025) Whitley, Gilmer, artist
The artist's statement: The will of the Complex is integrated down to the essence of all things: every person, every landscape, every moment; the Complex is the unifier. There was a time beyond recollection when flora and fauna were naught and instead there were only specks in a primordial pool. Perhaps they sought to emulate the night sky from whence they came, or maybe they just enjoyed swimming in the water, but in the time since they remade the world into a Gaia with new pools fit for the coyotes and the roots to drink and when the water became the clouds it could fly eternal and take any form possible and still the night sky was the same. However, the Complex is as hungry as it is giving and everyone ought to learn quickly not to touch fire, beautiful though it is. Integration always has its terms; few things grow in the alpine and we dare not dwell long, for the Romantics knew that Gaia's horrors were also her glories, and nothing has changed since; in love as in terror, but everywhere there is beauty: rocks can flow like rivers and dunes can tower above mountains and a single person can have soulmates uncountable. As unlikely as reality is, it is, and there is no such thing as nothing. Reality can seem to warp or destabilize, but somewhere there is ground to set upon and a sea in which to swim and so one ought to recognize the Complex from their node of existence as it expands infinitely before them.
Open Access
Meg Merriman: capstone
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2025) Merriman, Meg, artist
The artist's statement: My paintings explore femininity through stillness, gesture, and the presence of the body. I work in oil because it allows me to move slowly, layering, softening, and letting forms emerge at their own pace. My process is quiet. I build each piece from simple shapes, muted tones, and small shifts of light. I focus on the moments that feel intimate but often go unnoticed: a posture, a breath, a glance that lingers. These works are not meant to define femininity, but to hold space for its strength, its vulnerability, its complexity. I want each painting to feel like an echo of an inner world, something sensed more than explained. In the end, my work is an invitation to pause, to look closely, and to recognize something familiar within the softness.
Open Access
Sophia Galier: capstone
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2025-12-15) Galier, Sophia, artist
The artist's statement: Through oil narrative paintings, I aim to tell a story of sacrifice. We see the figure perform various forms of sacrifice, becoming increasingly bloodthirsty and hungry. She builds upon her sacrifices to appease. But what is she aiming to please? And why is she willing to lose her humanity for it? That is for the viewer to discover. I am greatly influenced by the horror novels I love so deeply, and it is where I gain most of the inspiration for my work. I am also influenced by true crime stories as well as my Texas upbringing. Taking elements of the folk stories I grew up hearing and the landscape that surrounded my upbringing, I design the environment and factors of the story. I also take influence from Christianity and Paganism, blending the two to create almost religious images. I work layer by layer, slowly building up details and values. I block in my colors and values and then blend them out together at once, letting it dry and coming back in with a new layer. What makes my work unique is the use of myself and my loved ones as references. This makes my work very personal to me and combative for the viewer. As you view the pieces, ask yourself: what is the story that's happening here? Whom is she trying to appease? And finally, what are you willing to sacrifice?
Open Access
Isabelle Maynard: capstone
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2025) Maynard, Isabelle, artist
The artist's statement: My paintings are rooted in memory: personal, fragmented and often distorted by time and emotion. I use my art to explore how moments from the past linger and resurface—not always as they happened, but as they felt. I interpret these recollections through a surreal lens, shifting and distorting objects and figures to reflect the visceral intensity of each memory. I primarily work with oil paint on canvas, using a layering and glazing technique that enhances the color and depth of the environment. This method allows me to create an atmospheric glow to my pieces, creating a rich and dramatic color palette. My process begins with a mental recollection of a memory. Even if the details are not accurate to real events, I build the painting around the feeling and let it evolve naturally as I work. Each painting I make is a way of reclaiming historical spaces by manifesting the emotional responses those spaces evoke. Painting allows me to assert my presence and narrate my experiences through a visual language. My work does not represent the past with precision, but rather captures how memory feels—often hazy, surreal, and emotionally heavy. My hope is that my work creates a space for reflection, both of self and shared experience.
Open Access
Maisy Gardiner: capstone
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2025) Gardiner, Maisy, artist
The artist's statement: Having grown up in the rural reaches of southwestern Colorado, an intimate understanding of the American wests monumental landscape has always been foundational to my identity. I grew up learning how to be wild and how to treat the landscape as an equal, raised by equally rugged and gentle devotees of the natural world. My childhood was one of adventure; navigating steep river canyons or climbing monumental peaks. My fascination with my place within such a venerated part of the country has always informed the way I create. Play with color, light, and the contemplation of my role in the world are fundamental tenets of my creative practice. Through creating dreamlike landscapes with distinctly vivid colors and whimsical distortion, the landscape is freed from its traditionally static and stoic role and allowed the vibrance and electricity of its true liveliness. There are places in which the earth seems to become a body, a living, breathing entity existing alongside its inhabitants. Through reimagining the dreamy landscapes of my childhood being explored by wandering hands, my work aims to explore the spaces in which this sentience overlaps. The land can become a body of its own when granted the opportunity, something explored by the hands’ interaction within each composition. The human touch can be one of tenderness or one of invasion, a boundary that is tested within each of my paintings. My work aims to create dreamlike portals in which the concrete physicality of the natural world converges with imagination and its vibrant essence. In considering the landscape of the American west through the lens of collaboration and absurdity rather than domination, agency is returned to both land and inhabitant.
Open Access
Ariel Sophabmisay: capstone
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2025) Sophabmisay, Ariel, artist
The artist's statement: My oil painting practice revolves around the metamorphosis of identity, heritage, and femininity while taking place in eclectic pictorial spaces influenced by nature. As a biracial and first-generation Asian American, I create speculative narratives and surrealist figures that attempt to document my very recent family history and the hazy and dreamlike experience resulting from our diaspora. My painting style–consisting of glazing techniques with a multitude of additive and subtractive layering–explores ideas of the finished versus the unfinished. I draw parallels between my paint application and the uncertainty of my cultural amalgam; an 'unfinished' warping of reality and what I believe my identity to be. My use of family and self-portraiture elevates our experiences to the realm of fine art, confronting the historical exclusion of our bodies from this space and hegemonic colonial representations. Through the exploration of memory and its impact on identity, I create surrealist landscapes where I challenge what womanhood, heritage, and strength in adversity can look like. Often riddled with allusions to art history, iconography, and metaphor, my deeply personal and contextual work allows me to explore my identity as an evolving state of becoming.
Open Access
Elizabeth Maldonado: capstone
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2025) Maldonado, Elizabeth, artist
The artist's statement: Elizabeth Maldonado is a Colorado painter pursuing her BFA at Colorado State University. Her work explores the themes of memory, identity and nostalgia through the reimagining of notable Batman video game characters. She alters the original characters' faces to create new identities that resonate with her personal childhood memories. Her medium of acrylic paint allows her to focus on the fluidity of these changing characters. Her inspiration for her current series stems from the video games she played growing up and the notable characters that make them.
Open Access
Quin Monroe: capstone
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2025) Monroe, Quin, artist
The artist's statement: As It Settles. In the marrow of memory, I build and unbuild a house. The house is a mirror. The mirror reflects a body. The body is a message. The message speaks in the spaces between body and house. The painting arrives in the investigation of the spaces between. — In this body of work the figure emerges and dissolves - sometimes a silhouette, other times a portrait. I use oil paint to explore the tension between memory and place, longing and resistance - woven into fields of pattern and color. My paintings hold onto the uneasy edges of self and unpolished memories, dirtied and weathered in their reflections. Instead, memory becomes patchwork: pieces stitched together, other parts missing, some replaced with stand-ins that the mind offers in an attempt to complete the memory- or image. Color finds itself in these paintings quickly. Sometimes methodical, others on whim. Oftentimes, oranges find a way to seep into the paintings and saturate these spaces. Its place as a foundational color in the body of paintings mirrors the foundation of its symbolism in my memory of home. It has threaded itself through my life with the Leukemia diagnosis of my two brothers. In my paintings, orange is both ground and ghost - an atmosphere that clings to the figures, burdening the narratives they carry. The figures I paint are placeholders for what cannot be fully recovered: they gesture toward what was lost, what was never known, and what quietly survived. They exist between absence and presence, between childhood and adulthood, where the work of forgiveness begins. I am not reconstructing the past but rather sifting through its remains.
Open Access
Ammon Redman: capstone
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2025) Redman, Ammon, artist
The artist's statement: I am fascinated by fractals. A mathematical formula that can endlessly repeat itself. Taking the concept of these fractals and applying the ideas of value, intensity and hue to these endlessly repeating shapes to create something new. I like seeing how far one can iterate through a fractal space, enhanced with these ideas to help create volume and depth and something new and unique. My work takes the fundamental concepts of color and explores the different ways of how it works and connect. Working primarily with acrylic on canvas backing I enjoy exploring the fundamental interactions of these concepts with an abstract view. Then taking human hand and brush to try and recreate such an exact mathematical pattern. This process creates interesting small variations in the designs. Giving the pieces that human touch, in contrast to otherwise rigid and fixed mathematical pattern with no variation. These small differences create several points of interest, showing that even in such a rigid structure there is room for change.
Open Access
Carrigan Grow: capstone
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2025) Grow, Carrigan, artist
The artist's statement: How does it look to carry a burden? When does justice start to taste bitter? What does it mean to feel forgiven? Who determines the smell of sweetness? Must I use words to speak? These are some of the questions surrounding Creation that drive my painting practice. I explore these ideas intuitively utilizing a variety of different materials to describe the nuances of the human spirit. Gesture is emphasized before representation to communicate what can be felt and not understood. Though my paintings are rarely premeditated, the human figure, written words, and vibrant colors often find their way into the work. Some ideas manifest quickly onto scraps of paper, others are loosely fleshed out on awkward wooden panels. I am interested in the way my materials operate on varied surfaces. A muted pastel, under a thick oil pastel, scratched into with an unsharpened pencil, work together as instruments in a symphony. My varied layers work to create different levels of intimacy with the paintings and the stories behind them. I do not expect the viewer to gain a direct narrative from the work, but I hope to provoke thoughtful reflection upon Creation and our mysterious place in it.
Open Access
Theo Altmaier: capstone
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2024) Altmaier, Theo, artist
The artist's statement: Painting is an instinctive way for me to express my inner world. Right now, my inner world contains a lot of grappling with religion and esoteric topics. As a neurodivergent person, I find traditional modes of communication – both written and spoken – challenging so I paint. It feels like the only way I can "talk" comfortably. I think of what I do (painting) as an act of translation instead of creation. I translate my experiences and thoughts into a perceivable medium. I work with oil paint on metal and canvas surfaces. Tarot, the occult, Paganism, and religious archetypes have played a major role in inspiring my art. My current body of work focuses on surreal figures and landscapes as a vessel to process my ideas about the divine and what I see in the world. I do not aim to make sense or develop a final answer about any of the topics I am painting about. I am one artist in an infinite lineage of religious scholars, philosophers, priests, priestesses, and other artists who all have something to say (and some claim to even have The Answers) about the divine. I do not and will not have answers. All I have is paint, surface, and time.
Open Access
Hannah Quinn: capstone
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2024) Quinn, Hannah, artist
The artist's statement: I create paintings of what in the world I find beautiful, and my work, the process and final product, functions as a cathartic release of emotions, good or bad. My art pays homage to the natural world and the celestial bodies beyond. The stars, the sun, and the moon, as well as natural elements of the Earth like mountains, deserts, trees, plants, and bones are often incorporated into my work, most commonly adorning or complimenting a portrait or a depiction of the human figure. I also take inspiration from mythology and folklore, and enjoy incorporating a sense of spirituality and mystique into my work. Ideas for a piece come to me at random through music, movies, other people’s art, nature, and everyday life. Or ideas slowly build as time passes until they are conceptual enough to be translated into art. Recently, my work has been mainly inspired by personal experiences, and this inspiration leads me into creating large, surreal, and elaborate pieces, where every image and detail are intentional. After trying many techniques of painting and learning through trial and error, I have found my preferred process, which is building my paintings in layers. I begin with a canvas toned by a transparent wash of raw umber or red ochre. This creates the foundation of my underpaintings which helps me establish the placement of highlights and shadows. From there I begin adding colors, and by working carefully and patiently with the paint, layer after layer, my vision slowly becomes a reality. For me, the creative process is very meditative and personal.
Open Access
Kaylee Congdon: capstone
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2024) Congdon, Kaylee, artist
The artist's statement: My artistic journey is a personal exploration of girlhood and sibling dynamics. Drawing from my memories and emotions my work captures the genuine connection that shapes one's identity during the formative years. My work is inspired by images from my childhood where my sisters and I were in the midst of shared experiences evoking a sense of nostalgia and capturing the stillness in the moment. Utilizing oil on canvas and a palette of bright and playful colors I bring these memories to life. I enhance the nostalgia of the images by making bold gestural brushstrokes. The subject matter within my paintings carries layers of meaning that prompt viewers to reflect on their own experiences of growing up, fostering connection within my work. My art shows the transformative power of shared experiences, and sisterhood, while also portraying my personal memories. Through my work, I invite viewers to address the complexities of nostalgia and memory offering a glimpse into the joys, and cherished memories that shape us into who we are.
Open Access
Lucy Benton: capstone
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2024) Benton, Lucy, artist
The artist's statement: My practice reflects ideas connected to memory, growth, and ecology, focused on the exploration of the interconnectedness between myself, others, and the natural world. I use my artwork to create a deeper understanding of the intricate world around me, as well as the relationships that shaped my identity. Growing up, I spent countless hours exploring the woods on my grandmother's property in Wisconsin, which led to a keen appreciation of nature. Drawing inspiration from my childhood, my practice is deeply rooted in the organic design of the natural world and how that links with my memories and my perception of self. My work often features the human figure, particularly the female form, serving as a reflection of my own involvement with and connection to the natural world surrounding me. Additionally, imagery depicting the human form serves as a connection to the nurturing energy of influential figures in my life—specifically my mother, aunt, and grandmother. These women have played roles in shaping my perspective and creativity. Using oil paint as my main medium, I incorporate vibrant colors and dynamic textures to evoke the living energy within the world around me. Through these paintings, I explore a combination of both abstract and representational imagery to reflect and explore my place within the world. Heavily inspired by artists like Lois Dodd, Ellen Seibers, Cecily Brown, and Mark Bradford, my artistic style involves a wide variety of mark-making, creating movement and energy within my brushwork. Compositionally, I approach my paintings as an exploration of space, color, and texture as I build my paintings up through many layers. My canvases are often evolving as I add and subtract through imagery and paint.
Open Access
Claire Paquette: capstone
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2024) Paquette, Claire, artist
The artist's statement: My work revolves around the concept of the stranger. The stranger is someone who is unknown to us and thus can be alluring and apprehensive. I paint these people as a way to crystalize a fleeting moment and to immortalize them forever in paint. Studying my reference photos is not only an act of striving for visual accuracy but also a way to study the essence of the individual. This parasocial relationship allows me to observe people more freely without the requirement of social engagement. I am just as much of a stranger to these people as they are to me. Yet, by isolating these specific moments I aim to contradict the nature of time and memory. By fully rendering the people within my paintings I deem them to be the focal point while leaving the background to be less important and thus more loosely painted. This contrast further emphasizes my relationship to the subject and the closeness I strive to have with them. Artists that have served as particularly potent references are Edward Hopper and Mamma Andersson. Both of these artists toy with their compositions in a similar manner, exploring the dynamic between what to fully render and what is pure color. Their influence guides my own exploration within the confines of paint as a medium. My paintings aim to confront the viewer and force them to contemplate their own relationships with people they encounter everyday. It is a common belief that people are these enigmatic, complex beings that we will never fully understand. However, when studied further there are fundamental bonds that unite us all. We are all linked by shared experiences and a common humanity that is able to transcend our differences. This connection serves as a way to cultivate empathy and through the act of nurturing these relationships comes the ability to enrich our lives in profound ways.
Open Access
John DiPietro: capstone
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2024) DiPietro, John, artist
The artist's statement: Ive noticed inconsistency with what many artists say they are doing and what they actually do. I try not to define what I do so that it won't change what I am doing. Ive done a lot of things I hate and I've always come back to art. I had an opportunity to go to school after leaving the military and now Im writing this statement. I think life is really novelty and complex. I think about the end every day. The world around me is growing more absurd by the minute. Questions like why are we here and why is it the way it is are always on my mind. I often feel like I am fighting a war in my head. What am I doing? Killing time? Spending money and acquiring material things? Being bad? Being good? All I have is right now, I know that at least, So I try to make art and I hope that someone can relate to it.
Open Access
Molly Haynes: capstone
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2023) Haynes, Molly, artist
The artist's statement: "Her Spirit…Reflections" explores the feelings of grief and loss from a hopeful and nostalgic perspective. Through multiple mediums, I explore what it means it to find peace and joy through the creative process. Clay and paint are materials that hold memory; memory of its shape, the artists' mark, the collective moment in time, of where it has been, how it has traveled and its purpose. They hold the memories of ancestral stories, how people have thrived or survived. In its fired state, clay holds the memory of the practice and the process. It tells so many different stories, nourishing the body, representing the body, containing the body. Similarly, the process of painting are many moments and marks, frozen in time. I use a traditional style of painting to create a feeling of dream-like nostalgia using symbols close to my heart, in relation to my late mother, who passed from early on-set Alzheimer's in 2006. I explore the beauty in missing someone so profoundly and the memories I carry. Rather than dwelling in how the pain makes me feel, I aim to share the joy from having felt that love. The poet, Ross Gay reminisces on the sensation of seeing birds flying in the airport as something he must share with others by saying, "I wonder if this impulse to share, the urge to elbow your neighbor until the bird flew between you up into the pipes and rafters you did not notice until you followed the bird there, is also among the qualities of delight? And further, I wonder if this impulse suggests- and this is just a hypothesis, though I suspect there is enough evidence to make it a theorem- that our delight grows as we share it." This is the sentiment I aim to bring into everything I create, whatever medium that may be. Each clay feather is a representation of motherly spirit, essence and the memory of her. The shadows that the feathers make are not unlike a memory; intangible and existing only because the form exists somewhere in time. They are a reminder of loss and grief but also grace and beauty. Attached to the physical body of the vessel, the feathers become weighted and grounded. They become personal, bodily, and intimate. The forms represent an opposition between spirit and physical. The spirit of the feather, a collection of her memories, lives simultaneously in the ether and the body, where one is formless and the other is bound by change. The paintings of the owls represent a deep connection to spirit, a reminder that they are close and always watching. Not only are they close through our memories, but maybe also through something much harder to comprehend. Clay and painting have given me the space to reflect on emotions and experiences that I have a hard time putting into words. Multi-media artist, Rose B. Simpson, reminds us that we are all guests on our earth, in our bodies and in this space. With that knowledge, I am honored to have been a guest in my mother's home, and now a guest in the memory of her. This is a reminder to hold space for gratitude as I am given the opportunity to honor her through my personal expression. This space is a meant to be a place of reflection for myself and anyone else. We aren't alone in our losses and grief; these emotions are communal. Remember that the greatest grief comes from what has given you the greatest joy.
Open Access
Samantha Homan: capstone
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2023) Homan, Samantha, artist
The artist's statement: Throughout my time working on this series, my paintings progressed into a collective study of liminal spaces. Although this was not the original intention of the body of work, I am attributing this common theme to my subconscious feelings associated with transitioning from student to artist during my final semester at Colorado State University. My final semester has been full of nostalgia for moments that have not yet passed; this feeling is strange and nearly indescribable. This series is a peek into my attempt to capture the present and revel in the spaces in between. Titled Light in Liminal Spaces, these works are a balance between my guiding interest in the technicality of light and my innermost feelings and worries. It is my hope that these pieces evoke similar emotions from within the viewer and serve as a reminder to appreciate the luminous moments in between destinations.

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