Haley Funk & Dylan Pashke: Grey Area is a body of work that emphasizes the void, or lack thereof, ‘grey area’ within myself. After talking to a former professor, I realized that my life is captured in either black or white, there is no in between. That’s what sparked the idea for this series. These works encompass an array of subject matter such as my life experiences, the people I’ve come in contact with, and how this molds the world into meaningful interactions. My paintings utilize design elements and principles of art such as line, color, value, and repetition as I’ve found some of the most basic building blocks of art, to be the most inspiring. Line in my work conveys connectivity, causality, direction, movement, my content, and is an overall unifying element you’ll see throughout my work. All of my paintings, except for Progression of Greys like a Funeral of Sanity, which is made from hung slats of masonry board, are oil on stretched canvas.
My content thrives off of the frustration, beauty, and liberation of being a person with no ‘grey area’. It’s quite the paradox, really. Works such as Obsessive, Compulsive; Repetition; Recluse; with their counterparts; I am the Catapult; I am the String and the Hand; and I can Read Between the Lines, further solidify the message. We are meant to have grey area as human beings, so perhaps this is a bridge-way to begin my next series, Searching for my In Between.
Artist Website:
Haley Funk
Until recently I’ve had always thought that art needed all sorts of layers. Art always seemed to need many complex reasonings and explanations for the world’s unknown. That each impression on a canvas or layer of media needed more than a, “I did it, because I liked it”. Artists always seemed to have a comprehensive “why” to their art. It’s not until this show, where I figured out my “why” as an artist ... which is creating art that I am drawn to.
No complex reasonings, just creating work that I want to create.
As an artist, I have always been drawn to a minimalist aesthetic. I am drawn to portraiture, abstraction, pattern, repetition, typography, and interactions between both color and mediums.
In this show, I wanted to depict what I am drawn to as an artist, but overall I wanted to try something new. As a continuous learner of life, I always hope to explore and charge into unknown waters. For example, utilizing a polymer plate and metal type, on a printing press, is something I would have never imagined I would have had the opportunity to test out.
Artist Website:
Dylan Pashke
