FRAGILE

Shannon Pritchard

Degree: BFA

Area: Painting

Thesis Statement

Being an intensely emotional person, I have spent a majority of my teen and adult years trying, unsuccessfully, to suppress my feelings. I have always been surrounded by the notion that expressing emotions is weak and shameful but attempts to “toughen up” were always futile. This body of work has been a way for me to confront my emotions and attempt to come to terms with them. I am exploring the way that emotion and memory can manifest in physical spaces. The scenes that I create represent sentimental places that I attach to formative events in my life, both positive and negative. I find that humor and sadness exist simultaneously within each of these works and I aim to push the idea that these emotions are not mutually exclusive and are often present at the same time within my mind.

Ultimately, I fell in love with the imperfect, trash-like qualities of the cardboard. The torn edges and stray pieces of tape, the shipping labels and bits of corrugation that peaked through became the most beautiful parts of the painting, moments that I could not find in actual furniture in real rooms. By making these rooms I create a world for myself, others can glimpse into this world, but I alone inhabit it. The cardboard allows me to invite the viewer into the spaces I am envisioning while simultaneously keeping them at a distance. I control the amount of information that the viewer can gather from the space; the cardboard becomes an abstract representation of real objects that I alone am familiar with. I am fascinated with the idea of exploring human emotion through a material that is naturally seen as emotionless, dead trash. This cardboard world is inherently fake and staged, but by carefully representing it I hope to emphasize the beauty of the material and make the viewer believe that somehow this cardboard house exists in reality.