This paper documents the execution and exhibition of a group of oil paintings exploring themes of spectacle and the construction of reality in contemporary American society. The paintings are composed of figures and fragments of text originating in stills taken from television news and reality TV. This paper describes and assesses the paintings according to a set of questions developed by the artist at the inception of the project. Various strategies employed in the execution of the work are analyzed and compared. The contribution of this project to the field of contemporary visual art is evaluated via comparison with other art, past and present, expressing similar concerns.

Recently my creative process has led to a new area of investigation and exploration. I have discovered that I enjoy the unexpected occurrences that happen while painting. I have an appreciation for the parts of my works that do not follow the preliminary sketch and are produced more subconsciously. While usually this aspect has been restricted by the adherence to a preliminary sketch and narrative, the new works explore these occurrences more fully. In the new works, I worked in a more spontaneous manner to create work that does not focus strictly on narrative but reveals itself more as a journey or exploration.

The inspiration for my undergraduate body of work is derived from my fascination with Henri Matisse, Jacob Lawrence, and the Impressionists. I suddenly became captivated with the Impressionist movement and the independence of abstraction. I set into motion a series of paintings and drawings featuring random African-Americans and African society representatives in vibrant color and abstracting forms, and was specifically concerned with altering the form outside of the realistic area. While in graduate school, I began to think about how the transformation from realism to abstraction combined with the conception of mortal to the immortal. I worked through ideas to see exactly where these views began, and where they would take me as an artist. Almost immediately I experimented with random figures found specifically in the N'debele culture in South Africa. In addition, I incorporated abstraction and expressive marks within the figure and slowly introduced cut paper, flat imagery and abstraction with the realistic figure. This became very challenging but I was determined to unite these ideas successfully. More recently, my work has concentrated on the essential elements that have influenced my work as an artist, which recedes to childhood. The main elements most prevalent within the work is rhythm …

The problem being considered in this paper is the alienation of the general viewer from contemporary art. Modern art has become less understandable than ever before to the non-art audience because it has, in many cases, ceased to deal with human-oriented subject matter, and has become detached from life. This paper examines ways in which modern art might be made more accessible to the world through the artists' use of emotion, intuition, intelligence, and other Humanistic elements as content for paintings. It contains a four-part proposal of what Humanist art is. The basic form is the use of rhetorical questions about modern art, leading one to more questions and to a broader, more open-minded attitude toward modern art.