HERE WE ARE.
by
Emily Forbes Browne
A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment
of the requirements for the degree
of
Master in Fine Arts
in
Art
MONTANA STATE UNIVERSITY
Bozeman, Montana
April 2011
©COPYRIGHT
by
Emily Forbes Browne
2011
All Rights Reserved
ii
APPROVAL
of a thesis submitted by
Emily Forbes Browne
This thesis has been read by each member of the thesis committee and has been
found to be satisfactory regarding content, English usage, format, citation, bibliographic
style, and consistency, and is ready for submission to The Graduate School.
Rollin Beamish
Approved for the School of Art
Vaughan Judge
Approved for The Graduate School
Dr. Carl A. Fox
iii
STATEMENT OF PERMISSION TO USE
In presenting this thesis in partial fulfillment of the requirements for a
master’s degree at Montana State University, I agree that the Library shall make it
available to borrowers under rules of the Library.
If I have indicated my intention to copyright this thesis by including a
copyright notice page, copying is allowable only for scholarly purposes, consistent with
“fair use” as prescribed in the U.S. Copyright Law. Requests for permission for extended
quotation from or reproduction of this thesis in whole or in parts may be granted
only by the copyright holder.
Emily Forbes Browne
April 2011
iv
LIST OF IMAGES
Images
Page
1. Father and Son, 2010, Charcoal and Acrylic Ground on Paper, 128” x 84” ......9
2. Father and Son (detail) ...................................................................................10
3. Father and Son (detail) ...................................................................................11
4. Watching Them Both, 2011, Charcoal and Acrylic Ground on Paper
258” x 89” (total installation) ...................................................................12
5. Watching Them Both (panel 1 of 4), Charcoal and Acrylic Ground on Paper
114” x 42” . ..............................................................................................13
6. Watching Them Both (panel 2 of 4), Charcoal and Acrylic Ground on Paper
114” x 42”................................................................................................14
7. Watching Them Both (panel 3 of 4), Charcoal and Acrylic Ground on Paper
114” x 42”................................................................................................15
8. Watching Them Both (panel 4 of 4), Charcoal and Acrylic Ground on Paper
114” x 42”................................................................................................16
9. Watching Them Both (detail of panel 1 of 4) .................................................17
10. Watching Them Both (detail of panel 3 of 4)................................................18
11. Watching Them Both (detail of panel 4 of 4)................................................19
12. Watching Them Both (installation detail) ....................................................20
13. Watching Them Both (installation detail) .....................................................21
14. Here Together, 2011, Charcoal and Acrylic Ground on Paper, 126” x 94”....22
15. Here Together (detail) ..................................................................................23
16. Here Together (detail) ..................................................................................24
17. Here Together (detail) ..................................................................................25
18. Here Together (detail) ..................................................................................26
v
LIST OF IMAGES – CONTINUED
Images
Page
19. Long History, 2010, Charcoal and Acrylic Ground on Paper, 42” x 60” .......27
20. Long History (detail)....................................................................................28
21. Influence, 2010, Graphite, Pastel, Acrylic Ground and Charcoal on Paper,
30” x 40” (total installation), 30” x 11” (each panel) ................................29
22. Influence (detail) ..........................................................................................30
23. My Mother and My Sister, 2010, Charcoal and Acrylic Ground on Paper,
128” x 84” ...............................................................................................31
24. My Mother and My Sister (detail) ...............................................................32
25. My Mother and My Sister (detail) ................................................................33
26. My Mother and My Sister (detail) ................................................................34
27. My Mother and My Sister (detail) ................................................................35
28. Right Here, 2011, Charcoal and Acrylic Ground on Paper, 85” x 60” ..........36
29. Right Here (detail)........................................................................................37
30. Influence, Father and Son, Watching Them Both, Long History (installation
view) ........................................................................................................38
31. Watching Them Both, Long History (installation view)................................39
32. Influence, Father and Son (installation view)................................................40
33. Watching Them Both, Here Together (installation view)..............................41
34. Watching Them Both, Here Together (installation view)..............................42
35. Long History, My Mother and My Sister (installation view).........................43
36. Father and Son (installation view) ...............................................................44
36. here we are. (title) (installation view) ..........................................................45
1
When I think of where I come from, it is not a place it is a community. When
asked where I grew up, I give the easy answer of the name of the island versus explaining
the transient nature of my childhood. To simply say I am from Bainbridge Island is true,
but I do not think of the actual island or any of the seven houses in which I lived. I think
of my family, the friends I grew up with, and their families. I have never lived long in
any place. The only constants were the people closest to me. Even as an adult, I have
never stayed anywhere long, moving every year since I was eighteen years old. The
education and career path I chose encouraged or demanded a willingness and flexibility
to move from location to location, opportunity to opportunity. I have grown to accept that
temporality and transience are a part of my life.
This itinerancy creates only temporal feelings of connection to a place. The
lasting connections I establish and carry with me are with the people around me.
Gathering these people together in my drawings and examining both the connections that
exist between them and the relationships I have with each of them allow me to create an
abstract space to which I belong. The people in the drawings do not belong to the same
literal communities. Many of them do not know each other. As the linchpin, I create this
community that exists only in my head and on the paper. The space in which these
people communally exist in my mind is translated onto the paper, giving the viewer an
intimate and honest glimpse into the ephemeral space I create for myself.
The way I see the world is directly connected to how I see the people around me.
The space I inhabit is created by the people in my life, and defined by the relationships I
observe and engage in. The images in the drawings are of those to whom I am closely
2
connected. I am part of an abstract space which includes the various people in my
community. In this space, I can bring together and make connections between people
from seemingly unrelated periods of my life. I put individuals with whom I have had
similar relationships together, those who have influenced me come together in an abstract
space. The space is not real, or representational of any real space, but empty and
dependent on those within it. The figures in my drawings represent how I interpret the
associations I am a part of and how I relate to the relationships I see around me. By
putting these people in the same space, I can examine and explore more effectively how I
see them and how they influence me.
The space is quiet, not chaotic. Each moment calm and still. The simple
communication between the figures, or the obscured overlapping of shapes and people
remain quiet. “There is nothing like silence to suggest a sense of unlimited space.
Sounds lend color to space, and confer a sort of sound body upon it. But absence of
sound leaves it quite pure, and in the silence, we are seized with the sensation of
something vast and deep and boundless” (Henri Bozco, Malicroix)1. The quiet space
allows simple connections between the individuals to be the focus. Each drawing shows
a moment or a thought, not a whole story. There is no complicated narrative, but a short
reflection or memory of something poignant.
Although the focus of my work is personal and figurative, the empty areas in the
drawings are an important narrative aspect. The color fields the figures reside within
represent this abstracted space described earlier. Confined only by the physical edge of
1
Bachelard, Gaston. The Poetics of Space. (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1969) 43.
3
the paper, the spaces are conceptually limitless. The undefined voids the figures occupy
allow them to remain projections or representations, rather than actual people.
Abstracting the space around the figures by leaving it unaddressed allows the viewer to
consider their own interpretations, memories and narratives in relation to the depicted
image.
Many pieces incorporate figures drawn larger than life. Referencing Gaston
Bachelard’s idea of the “intimate immensity2”, I enlarge the figures to create the feeling
of a projection, a daydream, or a thought. Adding to ideas created with the lack of
landscape, larger-than-life, immensity, and grandeur all bring the images away from
“every day” and imbue them with personal importance. “One might say that immensity is
a philosophical category of daydream. Daydream undoubtedly feeds on all kinds of
sights, but through a sort of natural inclination, it contemplates grandeur3”. This
contemplation brought on by the large-scale images allows the viewer to stand back and
still be surrounded by the image.
Small pieces become mementos or objects to hold, like a snapshot or souvenir.
Instead of projected thoughts, they are tokens that represent memories and moments. The
smaller work tends to be more abstract; less of a projection and more intimate. This work
does not define relationships, but one person over and over. It is the viewer’s
relationship with the image that is directly addressed. Each set of smaller images connect
to each other, building meaning. Either the close-up repetitious compositions of
2
3
Bachelard, Gaston. The Poetics of Space. (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1969) 183.
Bachelard, Gaston. The Poetics of Space. (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1969) 183.
4
Influence or the far away isolated compositions of Away add to the intimacy or isolation,
respectively.
The edges of the paper hold each relationship in a frame. Sometimes the area
around the figure takes over the image, and sometimes the figures fight the edges to stay
seen on the paper. Bernard Tschumi, writing from an architectural philosopher’s point of
view, discusses how a body entering an empty room is an act of violence, interrupting its
quiet ideal state. A space, even one meant for use, is no longer pristine when entered4.
In the same way that the entirety of the space is no longer intact when a body
enters it, the space in the drawings is disrupted by the edges of the composition. Whether
the figure is rendered miniature by the overwhelming void around them, or the edges
crop out shoulders, heads and bodies from our view, the space is forcefully changed. As
the artist, I get to push and pull these edges, controlling the tension and perceived
violation of the space.
The picture plane is cut way down in the pieces of Watching Them Both. All you
can see are the torsos of the people, emphasizing the space between them. This distance
between them is not awkward; the woman easily leans into the space, crossing it. These
images are from a candid video of my parents at lunch one day at Diamond Lake in
Oregon. Diamond Lake is a place of importance to my father, somewhere his father took
him every year when he was a child. While at this place that was important to him, and
was somewhat representative of his memory of his father, I caught this moment that was
entirely every-day. My dad is reading an email off his phone out-loud to my mother,
4
Tschumi, Bernard. Architecture and Disjunction. (Boston, MIT, 1994) 123.
5
both pushing his history with the place aside and pulling the present relationship back
into the foreground.
Contained on a single piece of paper, the compositions are long and narrow. The
tension between the two figures is intimate and relaxed. The drawings of my mother are
often overlapped, leaning in, and sitting back, comfortably listening. (Through
controlling pictorial space, use of ghost images, and overlapping figures the viewer
accesses the narrative.
The drawing titled My Mother and My Sister explores the intimate relationship
between two people, especially the relationship between child and parent. As we age,
that intimacy remains, but the familiarity may become strained. There is space between
the two figures, and their eyes do not meet, but the arm of the mother reaches out to cross
that space. The sole subjects of the drawing, the figures stand alone, not grounded in a
specific space. The isolation creates an opening into which a viewer can interpret their
own meaning. My sister stands in for me as I think about how I interact with my mother,
and my mother stands in for me as a protective older sister who reaches out and holds on
to the connection between us. Even though on one level this is a drawing about my
mother and my sister, it is very much about me, and my relationship with both of them.
The space around the figures in My Mother and My Sister, unlike Watching Them Both,
weighs in on the people instead of the edges of the composition. Allowing them to be
alone in a quiet moment, simply depicted, brings their shared touch into the foreground,
making that contact becomes the subject of the piece, not the actual people. This touch is
echoed in Father and Son, representing a relationship I only observe, but do
6
not participate in. It could be said they are in the act of bridging the gap of this abstract
space separating ourselves and others.
Confined on the paper, the distance between figures becomes a material thing.
Tschumi asks “If space is a material thing, does it have boundaries?” If the space
depicted is not the space itself, then the depiction is all that has boundaries, and the space
in which these people exist is infinite. If the space on the paper is real, then it has
boundaries – the edges of the paper dictating these with clean square edges. The space
reaches out past the edges of the paper and intertwines with all the spaces around it. Each
drawing is not an entity on its own, but a view into a section of what surrounds me.
The images are projected onto the paper, but the paper is not a perfect surface.
The pictorial space is broken up into sections – the edges of the paper creating rifts and
breaks in the plane. The ideas are projected onto the paper, not re-created on the paper.
The paper is still an object. Similar to projecting a movie onto a screen, the ideas are
only re-created on the paper, their existence is not limited to the picture plane.
Although none of the figures are actually drawings of me, they are all in a way selfportraits. I use the people because they are important to me personally, but also because I
can project myself into the depicted relationship from all sides. The abstract space within
my drawings allows me to be not in the drawing, observing the drawing, and everybody
in the drawing all at once. I am not interested in drawing myself, mostly because it is
unnecessary and redundant. The images communicate a sense of who these people are,
not necessarily the people themselves. I project how I see myself, and my personal
relationships onto these people. Carl Jung wrote that it is in our dreams that the
7
unconscious speaks to us. Dreams are not the fulfillment of repressed wishes, as Freud
wrote, but, according to Jung, the voice of the “higher self”. In our dreams we are being
given insight into our unconscious selves, and each person, each activity, each thing
represents a part of ourselves5. In this same way, I am using the people around me to
show different sides of myself.
In each drawing, I look at a relationship from a different angle. At the same time,
looking at myself from a different angle. In The Happiness of Architecture, Alain de
Botton writes: “Belief in the significance of architecture is premised on the notion that we
are, for better or for worse, different people in different places – and on the conviction
that it is architecture’s task to render vivid to us who we might ideally be.”6 We project
the ideal version of ourselves onto the space we inhabit. We decorate our homes, our
desks, and our spaces to show others who we are. As we look to our dreams to
understand our unconscious mind, I look to my relationships with others to understand
the complexities of my community. In the spaces I create in my drawings, I search for
who I am.
5
Weitz, Lawrence J., Ph.D. "Jung and Freud's Contributions to Dream Interpretation: A
Comparison." American Journal of Psychotherepy. 30.2, 1976, 290.
6
De Botton, Alain. The Architecture of Happiness (New York, NY: Vintage Books,
2006) 13.
8
WORKS CITED
Bachelard, Gaston. The Poetics of Space: The classic look at how we experience intimate
places. Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1969. Print.
De Botton, Alain. The Architecture of Happiness. 1st ed. New York, NY: Vintage Books,
2006. Print.
Tschumi, Bernard. Architecture and Disjunction. Boston, MA: Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, 1994. Print.
Weitz, Lawrence J., Ph.D. "Jung and Freud's Contributions to Dream Interpretation: A
Comparison." American Journal of Psychotherepy. 30.2 (1976): Print.
9
Image 1 – Father and Son
10
Image 2 – Father and Son (detail)
11
Image 3 – Father and Son (detail)
12
Image 4 – Watching Them Both
13
Image 5 – Watching Them Both (panel 1 of 4)
14
Image 6 – Watching Them Both (panel 2 of 4)
15
Image 7 – Watching Them Both (panel 3 of 4)
16
Image 8 – Watching Them Both (panel 4 of 4)
17
Image 10 – Watching Them Both (detail of panel 1 of 4)
18
Image 11 – Watching Them Both (detail of panel 3 of 4)
19
Image 9 – Watching Them Both (detail of panel 4 of 4)
20
Image 12 – Watching Them Both (installation detail)
21
Image 13 – Watching Them Both (installation detail)
22
Image 14 – Here Together
23
Image 15 – Here Together (detail)
24
Image 16 – Here Together (detail)
25
Image 17 – Here Together (detail)
26
Image 18 – Here Together (detail)
27
Image 19 – Long History
28
Image 20 – Long History (detail)
29
Image 21 – Influence
30
Image 22 – Influence (detail)
31
Image 23 – My Mother and My Sister
32
Image 24 – My Mother and My Sister (detail)
33
Image 25 – My Mother and My Sister (detail)
34
Image 26 – My Mother and My Sister (detail)
35
Image 27 – My Mother and My Sister (detail)
36
Image 28 – Right Here
37
Image 29 – Right Here (detail)
38
Image 30 - Influence, Father and Son, Watching Them Both, Long History
(installation view)
39
Image 31 - Watching Them Both, Long History (installation view)
40
Image 32 – Influence, Father and Son (installation view)
41
Image 33 – Watching Them Both, Here Together (installation view)
42
Image 34 – Watching Them Both, Here Together (installation view)
43
Image 35 – Here Together, My Mother and My Sister (installation view)
44
Image 36 – Father and Son (installation view)
45
Image 37 – here we are (title) (installation view)