Addison Jedd
College of Fine Arts, Studio Art (BFA)
Home
Home is a piece that I started a month after I got to Florida State University last semester. I worked on it on and off throughout the rest of that semester. I used the process that I have grown accustomed to: stretched canvas, gesso to prime it, and finally oil paint (to put it simply). I started with a digital sketch that I used to work through various poses and compositions before I landed on the final piece. After the gesso had dried, I sanded it down to a smooth surface before moving to lay down a grid to make sure I freehanded the digital sketch correctly. I toned it with a bright color; in this case, I used magenta since I prefer to paint wet on wet to allow me to make the work cohesive as well as make it easier to get my values right. All of this is the technical process that I start with before rendering it with oils.
The idea of this painting came from my melancholy feelings that turned in my mind as I was getting settled in my dorm and working with my roommate to decorate it. I am from Chicago; I have lived in a house a few blocks away from the hospital I was born in all my life. I love my home more than I can express. I love the winters, the city, the people, but I couldn't stay. There is so much out there I want to see, and I chose to go so far. Even though that doesn't make that uprooting much easier. But I have been given the kindness to love it enough to know I can leave.
I was conflicted. FSU is and was setting me up to be able to achieve the goals I have set for myself, and I am so excited for that future I hope to have, but I still wish I could go home on the weekends. Get over that homesick feeling in my gut when I went to sleep. See my parents, my dogs, my bedroom, my friends. You can't have it both, and I know that, so I painted to express this. My biggest influence was Frederic Leighton. I wanted to study his use of colors and anatomy, specifically his painting Sea Echoes as an influence with how I created my color palette.
Artwork Description:
I wanted to get across my desire to have it all. I created a piece that I titled Home that shows a younger version of myself and my dog sleeping on an old couch with various pieces from parts of my dorm and home mixed together in a quiet scene to express the fatigue that I felt trying to force the feeling of being between homes to fade. With time, that feeling has gone away, but working through those emotions happened largely with the slow moments I could find that I would spend on painting.