July 2022. Acrylic on canvas. 24” x 30”
I created this piece during a two-week intensive I attended at the School of The Art Institute of Chicago this summer. After the initial awkwardness of living with an unknown roommate and being in a studio class for hours on end with complete strangers, I made a lot of friends. When we weren’t staying up until four in the morning finishing a painting, we got to explore the city. On one of our first adventures as a close knit group, we went to Ohio Street Beach, and had to go through an underpass to get there. One of my friends deemed it a perfect moment to take a picture of the four of us in front of her. For my final project of the SAIC intensive, I wanted to focus on the theme of joyful memories, of which I knew I’d have many after the two weeks were over. I used my friend’s photograph as a jumping-off point, and relied on my own recollection of the excursion to incorporate dynamism and emotion into the painting. Not pictured here are the signatures of all of my friends on the wooden frame behind the canvas.