Benjamin, Aimee M.

HUMANITIES 1 Final Paper I went to the Insight exhibit over at Philippine International Convention Center (PICC) last August 30. The exhibit featured three very distinct artist with very different themes, points, and messages they wanted to convey and all three were very beautiful in their own artistic ways. From the three features artists, my favorite would have to be Crown Dolots works. And from the ve works featured by Crown Dolot, After Hope and After Power were my two best picks. Crown Dolot paints the human body in a very unnatural and somehow distorted manner. The bodies were almost like suspended in time, capturing, I think, very important moments of after transitions. Through Crown Dolots works, it was like the image of the body became something that communicates, like a printed work, movement literally and guratively. After Hope by Crown Dolot 36 x 48 Acrylic on Canvas 2012 After Power by Crown Dolot 36 x 48 Acrylic on Canvas 2012 The artists name is Crown Dolot. Her painting After Hope and After Power are made with acrylic on canvas and were created this year, 2012. In After Hope, you see a woman and a tiny book just below her. The rst thing I noticed when I saw this painting was how her body was positioned. At rst I thought it was all bent but then I realized how its as if shes falling. In After Power, you can see a man and a coin, with the mans body bent or both the coin and the man in a tossed position. The colours used in this painting s are really cheerful. You see gree, yellow, blue, orange, white, red. Colours that would make you think of something festive. And I nd it sort of ironic how she would use really festive colours on themes that, I think, circles around the loss of hope and hopelessness and too much power and the inuence of power. Dolot uses a lot of triangles and sqaures. These triangles have really pointy edges. And the lines she used are mostly hard

diagonal, horizontal, and vertical lines. Overall, I think the paintings have very dismal and gloomy moods. ! After Hope is a painting of a woman, almost like shes suspended in time, with her body in a pause, about to fall. You see that shes wearing something like a jester costume. Theres also a book or maybe a journal. You can kind of notice how her right hand is in this holding position, just how you would naturally hold a book or a notebook. Then you can sort of see how her face is in a very relaxed manner. This painting is about a woman experiencing a time in her life, maybe, after hope. According to the New Oxford American Dictionary, hope is a feeling of expectation and desire for something to happen. Having hope in something is important. Its like, this thing you hold on to, to keep going on, or moving on or through whatever. Its not bad to hope for something, just as long as we dont hope too much that itll get in the way of what could possibly really happen in the end. This painting shows how hope or hoping too much can eventually lead to ones downfall, like what the woman in this painting is experiencing. After Power is another painting appearing like its suspended in time, showing moments after power. The man on this painting is in an inverted position, like his body being circled or twirled around. His ngers on his right hand is crossed. Then theres a coin on the upper left side, and its sort of positioned like its being tossed. Power is the ability to inuence someones behavior or way of thinking, its the ability to make something act in a particular way, in the way you want. Power is very dangerous. It can make people do crazy things. This painting shows, maybe, how power can inuence people or what people go through after gaining too much power. Dolot uses mostly diagonal lines in her After Hope painting and vertical and horizontal lines for After Power. Since she used diagonal lines to create the woman in the painting, the lines give more of a feeling of vitality to the painting, it suggests a very strong and stiff (despite her body looking like its lost life) movement. But then in contrast to the hard diagonal lines that make up the womans body, Dolot uses natural, free owing lines to outline the body, both for After Hope and After Power. So it makes the bodies feel more like its dancing and is moving naturally as opposed to the really hard and stiff diagonal lines. The bodies have a free form shape. The free form shape of the bodies, the heads, and the womans hair, I think, gives this really graceful movement to the paintings. Its only natural because I dont think our body has a specic shape. Dolot uses a lot of triangles and squares in her paintings. It really stands out in the painting as a whole. The triangles

make up the womans body in this painting, and the squares for the man. The triangles on the neck part sort of makes you start looking down on her chest, which then makes you look at her hands then to the book then to her feet. It directs our eyes to move in an Lshape kind of way. The positive space in this painting is the woman and mans body and the negative space is the empty areas surrounding the bodies. The paintings kind of look three dimensional. Its as if the woman will really fall out of the picture. The space appears very three dimensional in a two dimensional painting and so it gives the illusion of the woman falling from the paiting and it creates the feeling of actual depth. I love how Dolot uses really bright colours like orange and yellow and it kind of contrasts with the blue and white for the womans body. Around the chest area, the colours have a higher value, which makes the colours around that area brighter than the rest of the areas colored. With that, itll make you sort of focus of in that area and since the colours gradually get darker, lowers in value, itll make your eyes move down towards her feet, where the colours get dark. Both paintings have bright, cheerful colours. I also love how she used blue, yellow and red, the three primary colours, for both her backgrounds. Theyre like, three very direct colours, like, when you see those colours, you know what to call them but the background doesnt really take you away from the subject of the painting. It actually brings out the woman and the man more and kind of helps you realize how theyre positioned in the paintings. Because you can notice how the colours in the background get more concentrated as it gets nearer the womans body. It almost becomes like the boarder for the body, like, it outlines it. There is balance in this painting. This painting isnt exactly symmetrical but the painting is very much balanced asymmetrically. Notice how the womans body is leaning towards the left (when youre looking at it, but leaning towards the right when you think about it). Theres like a really big space beside the upper half of the body. The same goes for the lower half of the body theres a big space beside it with a book in the middle. So theres no dead space that would make the painting imbalanced. Theres no part in the painting which looks heavier than something else. Everything has the same weight. The man on the painting isnt exactly in the middle, but his body is bent that it looks like its in the middle. The upper body of the woman is relatively larger than the lower body but I think its very much proportional as a whole. Since the upper body is somewhat larger than the lower body, the triangles get bigger as they move up the chest area and smaller towards

the lower body. Even though that it seems that there are more things happening in the left side of the painting, with the upper body leaning to that side, then you have the book or journal right below it, I think its proportional as a whole because I the head thats leaning toward the right, sort of makes up for that empty space beside it. So it doesnt really make the left heavier or too full as opposed to the right side of the painting. Perspective adds realism to a visual artwork. In this painting, perception is achieved by the relative sizes of the parts of the body of the woman. When you paint someone as if falling from where she is, you cant just paint the parts of her body the same sizes. If Dolot did that, the woman would look at and as if shes just planking diagonally on an empty space and it wouldnt appear to someone, anyone, that shes in a falling position. The parts of the body should be proportional in size to the position its in. If not, then it wouldnt really make sense. On of the things emphasized in this painting is her upper body. Its relatively larger that her lower body, how the colours are brighter in that area. Its like the whole upper body is isolated from the other parts of her body, thus, emphasizing it. The path of how your eye moves in this painting is L-shaped. You see the head, then you go down her arms and hands, then to the book and then lastly, to her feet. Dolot uses a repetitive triangular pattern for the body. It enhances the body, making it stand out from the painting. The triangular pattern along with the colour used somehow increases visual excitement, making you look at the painting more, seeing all the other elements included in the painting. For After Hope, your eyes sort of move in a C-shape - shoe to coin to head. For After Hope, I think Dolot wanted to show how or what someone will go through or feel after holding on to hope or hoping for something for too long. I feel that the person in this painting hoped too much that she just, fell. Fell out of her world, fell out of the reality of things. She lost the only thing she was holding on to, which was hope. ! Her body is bent. Its like her body is in a falling position. I think she was holding on to hope so much that it was the only thing keeping her from falling, like, hope was the only thing keeping her balanced. And after she lost hope, everything just started falling down. Like, she nally realized the reality of things. And so she let go. I also feel that, judging by the look on her face, she was self conscious. Her pupil is like, in the far left of her eye. Its like when you try to look at the things around you without moving your head because you dont want people to notice, or youre trying to gure out how people are reacting to what youre doing or whats happening to you. I

think she didnt want people to see her fall from the lost of hope, or after hoping too much, because shes unsure of how people would react and think of her. Shes scared of how people will judge her. And her lips are closed too. When we fall right, we have our mouths open to let out a scream, but hers, its closed as if she didnt want to scream. She didnt want people to hear her, to know she was falling, she was keeping it inside. Or she couldnt scream because something is keeping her from doing so. I think Dolot put more emphasis on the chest area because that's where the heart is and when you fall, it's usually the rst one to hit the ground, and when you lose that hope in something, the rst thing that's attacked is your heart. You're instantly heartbroken from the break of that hope you've been holding on to. So all that heavy feeling gathers in you chest making it feel really heavy with all the weight there. So maybe Dolot also wanted to tell us how not to hope for something too much, because in the end, its not always going to happen. What we hope for isnt always what will happen in the end. Its not bad to hope, but when one hopes too much, one can lose the reality of the possibility of it not happening. The painting After Power, similar to After Hope, shows what someone can go through after having, maybe, too much power. One of the things I realized was how the mans ngers on his right hand are crossed. Like when youre lying. Or when someone tells you to do this, you say okay but you cross your ngers behind and not do it. Waen you have the power, youre the leader. And when youre the leader, you have subordinates. And those subordinates will eventually want something from you. You promise them whatever they want, but since youre in power, and you dont really want what they want, you cross your ngers and not do a single thing. So this painting shows how one can and will lie once in power. The mans body is bent. Notice also how the coin in positioned like its being tossed and like, look at the mans body. Its as if theyre in the same tossed position. When you toss a coin, theres a 50-50% chance of getting heads or tails. For power, theres also a 50-50% chance of you turning out great or a mess. Another way of looking at the mans body is, if you rotate the painting 90 degrees clockwise, you now have the coin on the upper right side. The mans body isnt being tossed anymore, but like, hes bending his body backwards. I feel that, this has somthing to do when one will feel after power. Like, hes going crazy from all the power he gained. Or maybe, since he abused his power, people dont trust him anymore, no one is there to support him, so he fell on his back, no one there to catch him.i fell that Dolot wanted to tell us how power will affect our lives.

There is a great amount of emotion in this painting. When I looked at this painting and tried analyzing what it meant, I felt many emotions, remembering how it felt to somehow how have my hope broken. One can sympathize with the woman in the painting, feeling really bad for what has happened to the her. One can feel very confused. Not everyone will immediately understand what this painting can mean. It can mean many different things. People will realize the message Dolot wanted to send us and so our emotions will itch. The ideas and intentions presented in this paintings will make us reect on our emotions. I think, for the artist, Crown Dolot, this painting, After Hope, is a representation and a symbol for lost of hope or hopelessness. And After Power is a representation of too much power and the inuences power will have on us. Both the paintings are very beautiful for me. I think they both present wonderful ideas about hope and power and make us think of the immense effect both have on our lives.

References: "Elements And Principles of Art." Upload & Share PowerPoint presentations and documents. Web. 20 Oct 1012. <http://www.slideshare.net/kpikuet/elements-andprinciples-of-art-presentation>. "Art Principles." Download Learning. Web. 20 Oct 2012. <http:// www.downloadlearning.com/products/8/>.