Year of Award

2025

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Type

Master of Fine Arts (MFA)

Degree Name

Art

Department or School/College

School of Visual and Media Arts

Committee Chair

Kevin Bell

Commitee Members

Valerie Hedquist, Rafael Chacon

Keywords

figure painting, photography, semiotics, discourse, narrative, subject-position

Subject Categories

Painting

Abstract

There's Still Time To is a body of work composed of 51 photo-derived oil paintings. Each piece illustrates a relational situation which resists straightforward interpretation and generates infinite narrative possibilities. My source images come from my adolescent engagements with smartphone photography and social media, but the painted results are not focused on "photography" as a subject. Instead, I paint the photo to re-tread old memories and old relationships. The ambiguity of each figurative situation reflects the lived experience of relating to others and also serves as an invitation to the viewer who must base any assumptions about the painting on their own experience. I have grounded these ideas in the structuralist literary theory, semiotics, and Michel Foucault's ideas on discourse. I use semiotics to illustrate how I arrange painted signifiers to lead the viewer in analytical circles within each painting. I then use Foucault's discourse to explain how each individual viewer's interpretation of the same signs will differ, based on their subject-position within the greater cultural discourse. The artists Edgar Degas and Eric Fischl have been particularly influential in the making of this project, for their shared attention to complex human emotions and their different approaches to composition and painting. My practice is also supported by the history of "Bad Painting," and artists within the movement like Neil Jenney. These ideas coalescence within my work to express the unknowability of other people. In every painting, I attempt to capture the inherent mystery of human relationships, but I also invite the viewer into an attempt to solve that same mystery.

Download

Included in

Painting Commons

Share

COinS
 

© Copyright 2025 Lily Kip