Alma Mater - Hadrien Nguyen ( 2024)

Description 

The title Alma Mater is both a reference to Alma Thomas and the fact that UTA is my alma mater!! (orange in blue inside the frame.) 

The two subpieces are very contrasted, the corner piece is ordered and differs in hue while the other one differs in luminosity and is unordered. 

Both pieces are meant to be more organic in their ordering, even if the corner pieces is neat, it does not represent a grid, but individual brushtrokes. The boundary can be thought as a clear separation but also a door or window between the two worlds.  

Which world would you choose?

Inspirations

The piece is HEAVILY inspired by the work of Alma Thomas, a 20th century African-American artist whose work on colors and swatches is currently featured in an exposition in the Denver Art Museum (https://www.denverartmuseum.org/en/exhibitions/alma-thomas-composing-color). The other inspiration is Motherwell's Angust by Theodore Waddell (1991), also featured in the Denver Art museum in the North American collection (https://www.denverartmuseum.org/en/edu/object/motherwells-angus).

The idea of a door between worlds is also inspired by my reading of V.E. Schwab's book The Fragile Threads of Power. In this fantasy book series, 4 Londons are stacked on top of another, with only certain magicians capable of creating doors between worlds.

Process

I used Clip Studio Paint and finished this piece in approximately an hour. I attempted to recreate both Thomas and Waddell's style using a single brush in Clip. The idea was to use colors to contrast the two environments, separated by a boundary.