Being a Studio Arts/ Graphic Design minor, I wanted to not only create a blog post, but also incorporate an art piece into my final. Wanting to convey a type of Chicana/o Gothic art piece for this class, I first decided to visit an art museum to gain inspiration. I was not sure what type of art I wanted to create in the first place- a computer graphic? A simple sketch? A painting? I first thought of visiting LACMA, The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, one of the most famous art museums in Los Angeles. I was sure I was bound to come across a few Gothic pieces. As I walked through the museum, I kept in mind to look out for gothic themes that we have discussed in class.  These include dark colors, haunted houses, violence, fog, mad characters, and the uncanny and abject. The first piece I came across was one that stood out to me for its murky colors, stick figured characters, and buildings that were painted by simple lines. Named Village in Thuringia by Lyonel Feininger, I later researched that Feininger made this during a gloomy time in Germany due to the difficult living conditions he and his wife had to endure during World War I.

A second piece that I marveled at was another painting with dark colors mixed together, as if the painter was angry. As an article put it, “…their high emotional pitch, intensified by the artist’s frenzied maneuvering of brush and pigment, is compelling.” Strong emotions of angst are evident to be part of a Gothic setting. Named Hill at Ceret by Chaim Soutine, I knew I had to keep this piece in mind when I did my own. At this point, I decided the form of art I wanted to do was a painting so that I may use different brush techniques to add different textures and emotions.

My eyes wandered to the abstract art, where I stopped to see a piece called Allegro by Ralph Scarlett. The first part of the piece I noticed were the bright shapes but I quickly got distracted by the cloudy, gloomy background. It seemed as if these two themes could not go together, but the artist was able to make it happen. I absolutely felt that the background was an excellent gothic form so I took note of it. This was an interesting piece to me, being one of the arts that I quickly found to be different in a good way.

Another painting that captured my attention, I admit, was first due to the last name the painter and I had in common. José Clemente Orozco painted Street Corner, Brick Building in 1929 in New York, when the stock market crashed. The depiction of two long-coated men hiding themselves shows this Gothic theme of the uncanny. The way the painter made it a corner scene caused it to look sharp instead of smooth-sailing. After thinking this through, I was glad I spotted this piece. I knew it would be perfect for my painting. Not only was it from a Mexican artist who helped with the Chicano movement, but the gothic elements were present as well.

The last but most important art piece I noted was one called Woman Carrying a Coffin by Luis Arenal Bastar. The title alone sounds gothic. A woman is shown, indeed carrying a coffin on top of her head, showing the abject setting. However, what really stood out to me was the right side of the painting with the meshed dark colors of the night and waves with splattered brush techniques which called out “gothic”.  It also showed that the woman is walking towards the unknown; the turned pathway is definitely another gothic element of the uncanny.

I positively had enough inspiration with these five paintings I came across. I had no need of going to another art museum because I already had in mind what I wanted to create. I gathered my sketch book, pencil, and eraser to create a rough sketch. I did not have to think so much about it. I knew I wanted an uncanny character with a background of different gothic themed textures. I first sketched a shadowy figure, inspired by Street Corner, Brick Building, with its back facing the audience, turned to the right side, like the woman in Woman Carrying a Coffin. I wanted this figure to have a purpose in the piece, so I thought of putting a row of doors, allowing the character to try to choose its path. It is as if the character does not belong and is out of place, a common gothic theme. The rough sketch was done without the background, so that I may play around with the brush techniques when I started the real painting.

For the painting, I bought an 11-inch by 14-inch canvas board and acrylic paints. I made sure to choose dark colors: black tie, black plum, night sky, dark scarlet, and steel gray, and white, used for blending. I already owned enough paintbrushes and a pallet, so I was ready to get started. I worked on my painting as I played music that reflected the mood that I was trying to portray. After I painted the basic figures I sketched out, I was now allowed to focus on the background. Pulling ideas from all five paintings I saw at LACMA, and adding my own twist to it, I was able to successfully create a gothic atmosphere. I included murky, splattering, out-of-direction effects. The two main red lines crossed each other’s paths to create an “X”, where the character is standing behind. This served like a mark, indicating the unreadiness of the character to fit in somewhere. I hope the audience is able to feel the grand amount of uneasiness like I intended in this painting I named Murkiness.

Working on this project allowed me to feel like a real Chicana artist. Being a child of Mexican parents, but born in America, I am Chicana. I have to face struggles that my parents could not help me with due to lack of knowledge. The character in my painting could be said to be me, a figure trying to hide from making uneasy decisions on my own.

Sources Cited:

1. Glueck, Grace (1983). Art: Three Decades of Chaim Soutine Paintings.

New York: The New York Times.

2. Knight, Christopher (2009). Museum Deaccessioning Done Right.

Los Angeles: Los Angeles Times.

3. Southgate, M. Therese (2011). The Art of JAMA: Covers and Essays from The Journal of the American Medical Association, Volume 3

Oxford: Oxford University Press.