Post-Its for New Creation Art Show (March, 2012)

My most recent post-its are admittedly a little darker in subject matter.  In particular, these are two pieces that I produced over Spring Break for a collection of offerings from Duke's New Creation Arts Group.

The first is called "Good Friday," and unlike many of the images I work with, I had a very clear goal in mind for the symbolic elements here.  The brokenness of the church has been a fixation of mine lately, and the idea of Christ's Body being torn apart through schism has been a recurring image in my mind.  I incorporated the red sun in the background to convey a sense of absolute suffering (like that of Christ on the cross), and the face in the foreground is a traditional portrait of Christ that I have subverted a bit by pulling it apart.  There's a pretty lengthy story behind this piece really, so if you're curious to learn more, feel free to seek me out around the Divinity School or email me at tom.lewis@duke.edu.  I already have a buyer lined up for this piece.

The second is an untitled crucifixion scene where I was toying with a new technique.  I've always been impressed by pointillism (a style where artists use tiny dots of color rather than blends and brush strokes), so I thought I would apply that idea to the post-it medium.  I decided to keep things fairly abstract, making only the most basic form of a human body recognizable, and I wanted to make a point of using a wide variety of flesh tones in the image, so I created a full color palate using all the notes I had available.  I still consider both this piece and the new style to be works in progress, but with this new approach to post-it color matching, there's now a chance that I may be able to do something in the near future that I've never attempted before: realistic coloration.  I'll keep updating here as this develops.