Themes in Conceptual Art

              Art, more often than not, is created to convey a meaning: it may be a message, a feeling, a story, or even simply an appreciation. As such, art—and artists—typically take on a theme. That is, artists create based on what they want to express and what they are interested in.

            In the past, I have usually veered toward fantasy and the imaginative realm as that is my comfort zone. However, this year, I am choosing not to focus on the make-believe. Part of this is due to the fact that the fantasy-based pieces I was creating last year took up my whole year and did not allow me to work on other pieces that I had wished to complete, but a bigger part of it is because my interests changed over the summer. As I am in the process of compiling a portfolio for college, I have noticed that most animation schools require pieces drawn from real life, this refers to still life drawing, but it still drove me to looking at the world more often than I used to.

I have taken to attempting to recreate pieces based on the view from my bedroom window, my view from work, or even simply things I find interesting or beautiful. As such, I am going to be focusing on the themes of Looking Outward and Art and Nature; of course, I might also look into the themes of Politics and Social Order or Looking Inward at certain points, baring in mind that it is almost impossible to avoid any theme when creating art.

Looking Outward refers to things in ordinary life: the every-day, pedestrian things that make up our life. This may be as simple as doing homework or even as complex as coming-of-age stories. I’d like to merge this theme with Art and Nature, and show the relationship between humans and nature, perhaps even delve into human nature. I’d like to explore the emotions of wonder that a certain scene may cause, or how someone may attach themselves to a certain environment and imbue it with emotional significance. I think humans depend on nature, not just to survive, but to draw happiness and hope from. At this point in time, most of the news we are seeing regarding Earth is how we’ve destroyed it, and most have placed themselves on either side of the debate; Thus, I think it is important to remember what we appreciate and love about our world in the first place.

Of course, we cannot ignore what is occurring, and what I have written so far is surprisingly upbeat coming from me; depending on my mood, I may create more drastic pieces later on. However, the animation concepts I have in my head right now are optimistic and heartwarming ones (that is subject to change at any moment). I think, however, my want to explore this theme started last year with the rainy night animation that I did. 

It was just a simple moment that I noticed one night and thought was pretty, so I created and animation on it in less than a week. I truly loved creating that animation, it was sweet and simple, and it did not carry much meaning: it was just an appreciative piece and it turned out well. Of course, my animations this year will be longer and will have more going on in them. Additionally, I may very well choose to do more meaningful concepts later on. At this point, I suppose we will just have to wait and see how the year pans out.