For this exhibit, I wanted the overall theme to be that of a journey- from sunset to full night and through forests, culminating in my self portrait. I strove to create a tranquil mood that invited self reflection from the viewer. I primarily utilized color, texture, and composition to convey this theme and create unity within the exhibit itself.
I arranged my exhibit so that the viewer will move through it from right to left in a linear fashion. On the right side, the colors are highly saturated, but as the viewer transitions to the wall in the center, the colors become less intense when the viewer "travels" through a forest and sees the pastel colors of dusk. When they reach the left wall, the colors are deeper and least saturated, signifying the end of the journey as night is reached.
For me, the change from sunset to night has always been quiet and peaceful. I think of sitting and watching the sunset at my family’s cottage- a view I drew in my Afterglowpastel piece, or watching the stars from a clearing in the woods. In some ways, I feel most like myself in these moments, which is why I tried to emulate that feeling in my exhibit. This is also why I included my self portrait, too.
I used many different mediums- pastel, photography, ink, mixed media, oil paints, and charcoal- in my pieces because I wanted to try as many new things as I could. It was sometimes challenging to connect pieces with each other, but I focused on keeping subjects similar across different pieces, as well as elements of art and principles of design. One example of this was the links between my Afterglow pastel sunset piece and my Dusk photography series. While the mediums are quite different, I included dark, textured tree branches in the foreground of both and soft-textured sunsets in the background. For both, I incorporated the rule of thirds to guide my composition. These factors created unity between them, and unity throughout the exhibit because I placed them apart from each other. Another example of this was my Little Red ink painting and my Through the Pages series of altered books. Both were inspired by storybooks, though interpreted differently. For Little Red, I painted a scene from a fairytale, while in the altered books, I used physical storybooks as my medium. Additionally, I used color to connect them by drawing or painting in monochrome except for one colored element- Red’s cloak, or certain metallic-colored leaves in the books. I also strung fairy lights throughout the exhibit to connect Starry Night to the rest. The fairy lights gave the exhibit a whimsical, magical feeling, which contributed to the atmosphere I was trying to develop.