Captions for the Gallery
This blog page is my solution to the unfortunate inability of Squarespace’s Flow Editor to include captions for images within a gallery…. I can’t switch back to the Classic Editor………………………….. so here it is. I’ve started a blog.
To make sure the page isn’t a mile long, some of the images in the gallery will be mentioned underneath an image of a work that closely relates to it.
I thought it was smart to start off the gallery with some self portraits. This painting was done as a version of a master copy. Next to it is a digital self portrait I squiggled down one day, in procreate with a paint brush tool. On the other side of the digital work is the master copy I created my third year of college. It’s my recreation of Portrait of Victor Chocquet by Paul Cézanne, specifically from 1877 as he did many of Victor. When I tried to remember both the title and artist of the work (sorry Paul), I used Google’s reverse search feature using the image of my master copy….. In my eyes, my paint job was less than satisfactory. Yet, you just read the name of the original work as well as the artist’s name. Google boosted my ego with all that “this is an image of—“. I felt such a flutter in my heart.
Tari. 4ft x 4ft. Oil on canvas. 2021-22.
This had to be added towards the top of my gallery. There were a couple of months where all I wanted to do was draw my cat. She gives me so much peace and I couldn’t stop myself from craving her presence so… TADA. This entire canvas was actually a totally different painting. It was an assignment piece where we had to paint a photo collage of our own making. Clearly, I was severely disappointed in it but I couldn’t find it within myself to black out the four images of Tari in the bottom right corner.
I knew what had to be done: a Tari collage. I had lots of photos to pick from. Included in the gallery are some of the images I used as references. Next to them are a pair of pen sketches from the earlier years of my journey as an artist. The woman reading was done from life. They aren’t grandiose pieces, but I felt just as much pride after producing them as when I created Tari. I rarely feel this way so their inclusion was a requirement for me.
Ever? Never. 2ft x 3ft. Oil on canvas. 2021.
My peers mentioned this piece as a favorite, even towards the end of my time in school. After I made plenty of other paintings, this one continued to stand out to them. I consider it part of the Angry series, as I threw a lot of my turmoil onto the canvas. On the other side of the graphite still-life, done in my freshman year of LSU, is another oil painting I’d consider to be part of Angry. I titled it Reclining Nude. The creature shown is inspired by my nightmares and, unfortunately, the occasional daymare. The photo does not do it justice… please believe me when I say it looks better in real life… I swear.
Dr. Sasquatch. 1ft x 1ft. Oil on canvas. 2022.
Speaking on nightmares, this portrait of “Bigfoot” irks me to my core. “Sasquatch” was standing in my bedroom doorway with a 50s style house-call doctor bag as I lay in my bed unable to move. I had this image in my dream multiple nights in a row. Each time, more was added to the dream: him approaching me, speaking to me, pulling items out of the bag. I was able to wake up from the dream when I got too anxious. But, one night I couldn’t. Back in the same dream, he occasionally bragged about my inability to wake up and leave him behind. TW seriously if you’re squeamish maybe stop reading this “caption.” He surgically removed multiple limbs and organs until I was a creature standing on my wrists with a net tied around my ribcage to hold my remaining organs. He sat on the floor, at my level, and watched me cry.
“Well? You should be pleased as all these pieces of you are to be given to others that need it,” he spoke softly.
“Look at me! Look what you did to me!” I cried, straightening my elbows in an attempt to display myself. He shrugged and remained silent. “Put me back together.” He gave me a stern and almost confused look. “Please,” I whimpered.
“No.”
I awoke in a cold sweat.