Senior Art Exhibit 2006: Lusine Akopyan

I had the opportunity to study art in Florence in the summer of 2005. I found myself in galleries, museums, cathedrals, even in street corners searching for art. I soon realized that art was all around me standing tall and free in the city streets. I was inspired by the architecture around me.

The Italian architecture represented many forms of art. First, I saw it as architecture. Second, I perceived the ancient buildings as paintings because of the colors that were stained by time. Finally, I noticed that the buildings were a rusty form of sculpture, where elements had been added and removed over time.

I decided to incorporate these various artistic qualities in my paintings and abstract them a little. My series depicts buildings from the city, including buildings from Boboli Garden in Florence. My paintings demonstrate the structured aspect of architecture depicted by the precision and boldness of the black lines. Yet, there is a painterly quality in the richness of color. I attempted to capture the ancient rusty look that the buildings had as a result of the effects of time. Finally, my paintings have a sculpture like quality because each color was not painted but built in layers on top of one another through a process of adding and removing excess paint.

My series exhibits how the various forms of art can be wedded together in harmony.