Senior Art Exhibit 2006: Christen Meyer

Everything deserves a second look. Life experiences develop layers as they compose our character. History compiles our experiences making each of us unique and interesting––where we've been, what we know, and how we got here become significant in who we are today. If we are a product or our history, then that history is inherently valuable.

The content of my paintings was inspired from a series of photographs I took at a local thrift store. A store filled with many histories. These histories determine whether a given piece of clothing is old or vintage, torn or preserved, tacky or classic. Regardless, the clothes have character. My belief in the value of this character and my appreciation for its multiple representations inspired these paintings.

So I painted it… the character that is; the character that made the clothes worn in and not worn out. Because the character of the clothing is superior to its appearance, I valued color and ambiguity over exact representation. The idea was to create suggestive, cropped compositions in the paintings, to prize visual aesthetic over subject matter, to elicit an emotional response through intense color and abstraction. Enjoy.