Welcome to the catalogue of my first online exhibition! This exhibition is best viewed through the instagram story feature, so to experience it to the fullest effect, please head on to @ofvon on instagram and check on the highlights!
If you are interested in purchasing limited prints from this collection, including the GONE GODS series, please send a direct message to @ofvon on instagram. Thank you very much!
Thank you for viewing, and I look forward to brining you more godly deities from the pre-colonial Philippines!
The subjection of the female body has always fascinated me in ways the seduction of the male anatomy fails to do so -- to think about the body as a language of art, communicating emotions and peripheral depth that the glorious and powerful male body often does not easily justify.
I figured that to study the illusion of patterns and depth that I might as well conduct an experimental method capturing some emotions through body language. Languages that fascinated me during my Art of Spain class back in Seville and from romancing the glorious women in the works at the Uffizi gallery in Florence.
They all have communicated to me the act of "showing" and "hiding." There are thing that we sought to expose, and some are exposed better when our eyes could not perceive it. They are things we ought to show physically, but we fail to completely expose its meaning because of the limitations of the physical world.
As I venture into my craft of depth through patterns and color, I am deviated from it by the intriguing puzzle of perception, gazing, and hiding. Such challenge is frustrating, but when I look at how Graham have played around for me, I only trust his moments and movements, and then I know I am headed to the correct direction.
Will there be a correlation of emotional depth as perceived by the physical puzzle of lines and figures? Or are the notions of emotion and aesthetic traversing on a parallel path?
Brooklyn Heights was my home in the summer of 2013, and it was at that time that I met fascinating people that I still think of and about today. It was also at that time that I began to delve into a more expressive and impressionistic methods, inspired by Koons, Picasso, and Warhol.
I have posted this on my personal Facebook page, and I thought it would be cool to share them on here to show progress in my style and methods.
The fourth piece is now given to Jon F of Brooklyn Heights, and the last piece is now with Sam E of Upstate NY. The rest are still in my sketch journal.
More works coming soon, and thank you for viewing.
Toned paper is quite a challenge for what I am trying to achieve here. Because it's not the traditional "white" canvass, I sort of attempted to work mostly from lighter and darker values, but I essentially was not successful.
I find it tricky to adjust my trained method of light-to-dark to light-and-dark. I need more practice for this method, but I think I must move on and may come back to perfect this method.
Anyway, this became a practice of some sort for my more realistic pieces coming in later. I intend to use the same models -- wonderful people I met in Seville that will forever be in my heart: Cristina, Erin, Aaron, and Lauren.
V
The year 2015 will forever be remembered as a year full of travelling, backpacking, and self-exploration. I thought this year would be me "slow year" as I have exhausted my limited opportunities to travel.
Two things happened: I got an internship in Washington, DC serving US Senator Hirono, and I received research/travel grant to travel to Seville, Spain.
As I explored America's Capital and traversed the western cities of Europe, including Morocco and Iceland, I rode airplanes, ships, trains, busses, and camels. Sketching, after scribbling some poem, help me relax during my slight flight fright attacks.
In this album are sketches I did to calm my nerves, and they are peeks to what I saw, whom I travelled with, and what I observed in those moments of slight panic and jubilant excitement.
Keep in mind that I have to creep up a bit on the people at the boarding gates, and I only have so much time to capture what I saw. I can't remember what I drew correctly or not, but I certainly remember where I was.
