This portfolio work was from our Graduate Portfolio Prep class.
Throughout their course, the student developed a clear concept that worked alongside their artist statement. While the student didn’t have masterful skills in art foundations or techniques, an art portfolio for graduate school applications usually doesn’t require them. Rather, graduate programs want to see you as a unique individual artist and the kind of vision you would like to achieve in the program.
That said, this acrylic painting doesn’t involve a lot of realistic painting skills. It rather falls into an abstract realm with certain realistic elements that give it a spatial depth and 3D illusions.
Dividing the canvas vertically into two sections, the yellow fluorescent string is suspended and blocked by another tension by two hoops that form a vague intersection across in the middle. Those two tubes connected together are intertwined with the string at the center. Sections of all these parts are concentrated onto that center, itself becoming a tranquil core wrought with tensions.
The work explores the idea of tension and kinesis through visual effects, such as fluorescence and geometry. Although not too complicated in composition or complex in techniques, the work shows the possibility of sophisticated abstraction.