My arrival as a college student here at Kent State in 2010 first led me on a three-year hunt as to what I was destined to accomplish on this campus as a whole. I began taking basic art classes in Fall 2011 and became interested in the lifestyle and practices of creating art in the college atmosphere. However, the extreme pressure and anxiety of job security after college with a fine arts degree influenced me to take VCD courses until the remainder of Fall 2013 as I thought VCD would be a good fit for me. Needless to say it was not what I expected, relying heavily on digital art instead of the classic, non-technical, manual aspects of Fine Arts courses at Kent, aspects that I love. This experience reverted my path back into Fine Arts.
Throughout my experience in the fine arts department at Kent State, I have grown increasingly interested in the textures that grace the surfaces of abandoned and rustic objects and the specific areas in which these found objects hail from, areas I have portrayed and claimed as incredibly important to my life as “hotspots.” These caches of artistic gold located in undisclosed locations extending to the outskirts of Kent are what inject serious levels of creativity and sincere contentedness into my life. The combination of these aspects along with a heavy influence of nostalgia spawned from visiting these hotspots as a child has given me a strong desire to document the spot in an artistic way. The documentation really broke ground during my Intro to Fine Art Photography course. The literal documentation via the medium of film photography allowed myself to gather all the info I need to really begin thinking about how I will portray the hotspots in the artistic sense, as photography is only the backbone and main concept while painting allows the complete transformation of my documented concepts.
Artists and concepts of which I became incredibly interested in and stood out to me during my Art History courses include the dramatic compositions conceived by Thomas Eakins and John Copley who both utilize light and dark areas along with a rich color palette, the beautiful abstract Cubism compositions by Pablo Picasso and Gino Severini (mainly the work, “Armored Train in Action”), and the rich saturation of color existing in Pop Art works by Andy Warhol and Ed Ruscha. These artist really caught my eye over the years and have granted me even more of a desire to paint at the level they accomplished in their works.
The time I have spent observing over the years and become increasingly aware of the potentiality of portraying these hotspots has led to my desire to be a painting major. I wish to attempt the emulation of information gathered from hotspots upon a canvas utilizing compositions of which that are pleasing to the eye and can offer something new and exciting to the art world.
Ian Marshall: Blog of the Arts 