Scholarship & Research

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Flesh as relic: painting early Christian female martyrs within Baroque sacred spaces
(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Arts & Architecture, 2019) DuBois, Stormy Lee; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Todd Larkin
Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio's Burial of Saint Lucy (1608) in Santa Lucia al Sepolcro, Syracuse, Domenichino Zampieri's Martyrdom of Saint Cecilia (1614) in San Luigi dei Francesi, Rome, and Giovanni Francesco Barbieri's Burial of Saint Petronilla (1623) in Saint Peter's Basilica, are remarkable Baroque depictions of Early Christian female martyrs which illustrate a tendency toward establishing a dialogue between the expiring or lifeless body of the saint and her own venerated grave or relic. Eschewing the requirements and textual authority laid down by the Council of Trent, which prompts the theatrical and violent imaging of saints and martyrs, each piece exhibits a juxtaposition of martyred female body, earth, and altar that transcends naturalist and classicist aesthetics. Rather than offering a dramatization of a saint's life or martyrdom, each artist chose to render a funeral scene directly and with minimal distractions. In the intersection of the traditional veneration of relics and Counter-Reformatory developments in the veneration of martyrs and gendered behavior in church, the following thesis will suggest that each artist rendered the transformation of mortal flesh to saintly relic in order to facilitate the contemplation of the martyred female body implicit in the veneration of saints without transgressing gendered relations within sacred spaces.
Painting the impulse
(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Arts & Architecture, 2005) Moffett, Jessica; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Robert R. Smith
My primary focus in my paintings is the male figure. These paintings have evolved in a non linear progression. I went from representational to partly abstract and back to representational infused with sequential art. During this development, I decided to paint my figures to resemble comic book characters of my own creation and paint them to represent emotional qualities of spontaneity and dualities of my psyche. I am devoted to painting the male figure. The male nude has greater intensity in muscle definition and skeletal structure that creates dynamic anatomical imagery. This is why I draw and paint the male nude more willingly than the female figure. I decided to integrate my admiration and study of Japanese comic books (called ‘manga’) in my paintings because this medium of Japanese popular culture is something that continuously fascinates me. Since I harbor a desire to become a comic book artist, it became inevitable to instill physical features of sequential art upon my figures. The facial structure is especially recognizable to those familiar with the average male protagonist seen in Japanese pop culture. Large eyes and sharp simple lines of the face and body are what construct a prototypical manga male figure. It is this format of the ideal I apply to my own comic book characters.
Some One
(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Arts & Architecture, 2008) Heaston, Paul Bradford; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Sara Mast
In the wake of the emergence of the photographic portrait over the last century, I aim to examine the current relationship between the painted portrait and photography; specifically, the use of the photograph as a tool that can inform and transform the investigation of identity in painting. While a great deal of my interest lies in translating the photographic image into paint, I am more interested in what the nature of my process can reveal about the people I know. I believe my intimacy with the sitter turns the process of transcribing a clinical and often unflattering photographic examination into a more challenging psychological exploration of my relationships with both the subject and the viewer. I force myself to make editorial choices to reconcile the impartial and detached information provided by the camera with what I already know about the sitter.
New Paintings
(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Arts & Architecture, 2005) Smith, Steven Connolly; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Harold Schlotzhauer
These works stem from a traditional subject matter for painting, the nude. And, these paintings incorporate many of the traditional aspects of representing the nude figure: they are constructed on panels and painted in thin, transparent layers. They utilize linear and atmospheric perspective in order to achieve the illusion of space. They are monumental in scale. The colors are derived from a limited palette, and the figures are grouped in artificial ways. At first glance, they appear to be traditional figure paintings. Closer inspection reveals anomalies to traditional figure painting. The figures appear transparent and incorporeal, as though aware they are constructed of paint. The underpainting is pronounced, and repentances--pentimento--quite apparent. These effects fix the figures somewhere between the physical surface of the picture, and the illusionary space of the painting. The interplay of these paintings as they shift between physical, two-dimensional object and illusionistic window is carried through to the frames. The traditional function of the frame--to organize the space of the painting, to eliminate outside distraction, to focus the attention of the viewer--is hybridized to serve multiple functions. Spaces in the frame that are real, that are actual, echo spaces in the painting that are illusionistic. This activity unites the painting with its frame. The real transparency of the space in the frame is allowed to contrast the painted transparency of the painted surface, calling into question the differences of each, and allowing frame to be as painterly, as gestural, as illusionistic as the painted surface.

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