IB Visual Arts LINCOLN SCHOOL Costa Rica: PAOLA CHEN LI IB Lincoln School Costa Rica 2015

THE ARTIST STATEMENT

Paola Chen

Word Count : 345

IB Art is a place to explore and to venture out. I used to hinge on realism because I wanted beauty. I wanted proportionality. I wanted accuracy. All I wished for was reality, where I could create an aesthetically pleasing artwork with nothing else beyond that flat surface. Somehow my head couldn’t grasp there was something outside “realism;” that realism was not the only technique to achieve beauty. The reason I chose IB Art was because I aspired to cross the threshold of “average” into an unknown place to color my mind and grow.

Words never come out easy for me when talking about feelings, so the only way I voice out my opinion is visually. Thus, I started using art as a way to express my reaction towards the flawed societal demands and the doubt of identity. I struggled with finding a true style that reflected this theme, but the many techniques I learned throughout the course, such as media testing, encouraged me to experiment with different brush strokes and finding a style. Everything I did before was painting inside the lines, so in order to overcome my weakness I regarded everything as a media test. This thinking helped me because then I wouldn’t have the pressure of making a mistake. It made me feel unbounded. Furthermore, the media I explored the most was acrylics. I call myself more of a drawer than a painter precisely because my hand was untrained in this area, but later I was exposed to splashes of paint and the freedom of a canvas.

Near the end of the course I realized the progression of my art, where line quality and color became my strengths. I was majorly inspired by the Expressionist movement. The dynamism and color in "The Scream" by classical artist Edvard Munch became the origin of my Expressionist period. Similarly, contemporary artist Shin Kwang Ho and his renditions on the nature of identity motivate this exploration and beyond. Influenced by them, I came into a conclusion that my artworks reflected specks of Existentialism and Expressionism inside a realist silhouette.