Light and Dark
Janelle Britton
Alyssa DeFalco
Elizabeth Kramer
Cecilia Peters
May 5 - June 6, 2010
Reception: Friday, May 21, 2010 6-9pm
The students in advanced painting at Central Dauphin High School have been given the assignment to collaborate as a class on a theme and find a venue to display their body of work in the community. The students have chosen to work with the theme of Light and Dark. Each student has taken this theme and represented it in several different ways. Whether it is literally the concept of light and shadow or symbolically representing an emotional balance or imbalance within their lives, each student allowed their personal experiences to inspire their work.
Janelle Britton:
For my series “Light and Dark,” my intention was to shed light on the people in our society who are abandoned and forgotten. They, in a sense, live in “darkness” and long for “light.” These people are the ones who live in the shadows of others, the ones who endure pain each and every day. I know that I have and believe that we have all been in this type of situation at some point or another in our lives, and we need to remember what that feels like and therefore, show compassion for those who live lives like this on a daily basis. The literal aspect of “Light and Dark” is the fact that in the various faces in my pieces, I used high contrast in utilizing the ink. I hope that through this series, I have been successful in helping people to remember that there are people who do not enjoy the lives that so many of us are privileged to live.
Alyssa DeFalco:
Horror of our Love
My inspiration for this series was a song that I was introduced to by a person I wish I never let into my life. I was dating this person, and we had a relationship I will never be able to understand or explain. Although there were true feelings between us, I was chased away by his forms of abuse and psychotic antics. He would dress me in baggy clothes to hide my body and face, because I was not worthy to be seen with him. He broke into my house twice, once to sneak into my bed, and once to sleep in my bed when I wasn't home. When I was finally strong enough to let it all go, he would call me for hours straight and send me pictures as he sliced his arms wide open.
Many of my friends know what he has put me through, but don't really understand how much it has affected me as a person. He made me feel completely worthless. I felt like I had to hide my face from the world; although, I had no true reason to be ashamed of myself. For the longest time I'd be terrified to be home alone, knowing he could come over, or already be in my house at anytime. Up until recently, he would text me, telling me he was in town, because he enjoyed knowing how terrified I was. I would hide in the bathroom with a knife, and be on the verge of a panic attack whenever he said he was in town.
The title of the song, which is also the title of my series, basically sums up the entire relationship. Love is meant to be beautiful, light, and enjoyable. But horror is dark, evil, disturbing, and demented. The relationship between us had love, but a horrible, controlling, abusive and obsessive love. The song reminds me of our relationship. When listening to it, the song sounds so mysterious, captivating, and beautiful. Love is meant to be beautiful and captivating. If you actually listen to the lyrics, it is gruesome, horrible, and incredibly disturbing which is how my relationship was.
My series represents an emotional light and dark that is portrayed in the lyrics of this song. Each painting portrays what I personally imagine when listening to the song. Each painting also reminds me that I was strong enough to overcome this pain. Creating this body of work is my way of saying, “I'm not afraid of you.” I am an extremely beautiful person, inside and out. Nothing he has done to me will hold me back anymore.
Cecilia Peters:
There's always going to be bad stuff out there. But here's the amazing thing -- light trumps darkness, every time. You stick a candle into the dark, but you can't stick the dark into the light.
Elizabeth Kramer:
The idea for this series was decided in our painting class. Deciding on a theme to encompass the work of four very different art students can be challenging; in that, you do not want to restrict them with specifics. We felt that Light/Dark was a theme anyone could relate to and a theme that is truly subjective and has many plausible solutions to it. Choosing Light/Dark seemed right because of its freeing quality as well as how interesting it will be to see and compare the many interpretations it can take on.
For my series of Light/Dark, I wanted to primarily take on a simple concept. I wanted my work to be straight forward and visual. I wanted the paintings to hit the eye with contrast. I would achieve this by using saturated colors against tints and shades. The idea of contrast is a factor of the theme Light/Dark in that essentially Light/Dark is just a contrast, a comparison of two opposites.
Though contrast was my primary goal in achieving Light/Dark, I also wanted to portray Light/Dark in other aspects of my paintings. The subject matter of my series is people. I often find myself drawn to people when painting and I keep trying to reinvent the ways I can portray them. I wanted to incorporate the idea of Light/Dark with my depiction of the people. Light/Dark relates to facial composition and how a face has so many angles and points of contrast. This idea of relates back to the idea of viewing Light/Dark as purely a visual contrast. With my subject of people I tried to incorporate another interpretation of Light/Dark. With this interpretation I tried to create people who have an appearance of something behind their eyes; in that, I wanted to create people with the look of real emotions, and real life behind them. The attempted animation of my people shows further assimilation of Light/Dark; in that, I am trying to convey the true complexities of real people. Those complexities that are found in every person are not so easily seen or judged. When one first encounters another person, you are able to figure out the knowns and unknowns of that person. When you first see and judge a person, you feel you can make conclusions about that person with certainty and other conclusions with uncertainty. My attempted portrayal of trying to draw people with a genuine quality and trying to express a personality behind them relates to Light/Dark in viewing Light/Dark as what is known and what is unknown.
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