Dylan Ragas
Beach Day
Acrylic on panel
18 x 18 in.
From the Artist
Beach Day is a painting that examines the intersection between the abstract and the representational. I developed the painting in layers, which were overseen by my painting professor at the college, Kianja Strobert. I began the piece in half-scale studies, with multimedia and an express focus on mark making. The abstract and graphic forms which occupy the majority of the piece — and especially the top left and bottom right of the composition — are drawn from a collage I formed out of various charcoal and ink marks that I had first created. I then copied the collage onto panel using acrylic, to use its non-representational composition as a kickstart for my own painting. This painting gets its name from a family beach photograph which I tore up and pasted onto my collage, and then worked into the painting accordingly. The stripes of the mother’s shirt mimic the graphic marks throughout the abstraction, and the shirt’s dark neckline parallels the oblong oval to its left, in turn. The baby’s gaze adds a direct address to the viewer that I felt was lacking in the painting’s abstract state. This poses the question of how we view the non-representational, and how a piece can view us back from beyond the marks on the surface. With “Beach Day,” I hope to use both images and automatic mark making to create an engaging interaction between drastically different sources. I found the clash between these sources to be energizing and vivid, and useful for considering the intersection between technique and the instinctive.