OWEN GILLESPIE '25

I am exploring how important moments, people, and spaces in my life can be memorialized through expressive mark-making and painting. The primary questions guiding my sustained investigation are: How can my style of painting echo the impressionistic approach of a fleeting moment in time? How can my feelings towards important people and spaces in my life be expressed through color and paint strokes? How can I complement the environment  and narrative of my work with small studies and abstract sentiments felt during my time in these spaces through layered mark-making methods?

I first identified the relationships and environments that made a lasting impression on my life, and created heavily textured paintings for each subject using a palette knife. While working on large compositions that displayed a greater sense of depth and narrative, I zoomed into smaller subjects of the major composition to practice my method of mark-making on a singular object holding personal significance to the larger space.  Revision took place during the painting process and in my linear depictions of time and motion I desired to express beneath the surface of the painted subject matter.