Final- Lupien

My piece “Family Portrait” was meant to portray the unity of a family despite their relation or distance from one another.  The piece is very meaningful to me due to the collective nature of it as well as the time taken for the work that makes it up; to choose paper, a medium for each individual piece, and even their placement with in the larger piece.  I came up with the concept by the simple yet constant driving force that is my own family. As we grow and spread great pain is taken that we are still there, in some way or another, for each other. Another way this idea came about is the thought of families growing in number, rather than distance, such as when a marriage occurs that family doubles.  

With all this in mind I began thinking of the concept and composition I could use that would work best. I remembered how people would ask me if I was “Karen’s daughter” because we look so much alike. So this idea of creating a face out of multiple people began to take form. This idea was enforced by the work I saw of Ulric Collette. At this point I wanted people in key places for the meaning of either who they were with or the where they were in the portrait as far as distance from the center.

I began to choose my materials, specific paper for a person was chosen, as well as a medium that related to them. The paper is a mix of water color paper, drawing paper, yupo paper, and black paper all 3in by 3in and adhered to a wine red Colourfix Paper that gives the piece a total size of 14½in by 18in. The mediums range from charcoal to water color and ink, with a few oddities thrown in for that special case or two.

I enjoyed this piece I wish I could have had the time to make it larger and include more detail. If I was able to redo it at a later time I would expand to 5in by 5in squares and add greater detail while spending more time with each square. Over all I think my experience as well as the overall work was successful.