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The theme of my piece is looking back into African American
history. Each quadrant of the painting shows a different
situation of African American life. Each role is specifically put
into its quadrant location based on the parts of America where
that situation took place. A slave is on the south area of
the painting while a railroad worker is on the north area. The
jazz man and the soldier from war are both on the east side because
both situations were focused more on the East Coast of the United
States. The painting as a whole is made to look like a black man
in bars behind bars on a white background. This signifies that
even though in most of situations, African Americans were considered
"free," they were still treated like criminals or animals. They
were locked in, and surrounded by the white world. The black man
is in an alert position meaning that no matter what situation an
African American was living in, whether it was a tough or a happy one,
there was still continuous danger from the white community.
During the Harlem Renaissance, more and more African Americans began to
look out and defend themselves making this alertness necessary. I began this project by first viewing other artwork from the Harlem Renaissance. Aaron Douglas's block print piece called "Defiance" really stood out to me so I decided to recreate the awkward-positioned soldier in a new style using a different medium. I first created a rough draft on regular scratch paper. I then did a second draft on paper as big as the canvas so that I would know the relative size of each picture within the painting. Having to alternate black and white was tricky so doing a draft of this piece was very helpful. Once I was satisfied with the rough draft, I made the final product on cancas. I chose to use acrylic paint becasue paint stands out more than media such as marking pens. I wanted my painting to be purely black and white and because acrylic is thick, one wouldn't have to see that there are overlaps and different shades of black. The black really stands out and does reate the effect I wanted. Art piece by Hee-Kyong Kang |
