HAAnevada: The Arena

Tuesday, March 31, 2015

The Arena

The surface as an arena.
In starting this 9`` X 6`` canvas, I found myself in awe of the scale, and a bit terrified of the whole damn idea. Now, I am particularly accustomed to large scale works, but looking at this surface laid out, a dominating blank wall, I was oddly reminded of one of my favorite professors from my undergrad, Kelsie Harder. He used to always say that there was nothing worse than the blank canvass--you know you've got to fill the damn thing! I always thought that was a foolish sentiment. But in my stupor, staring at this canvas towering above me, and thinking how in the world will I fill a damn wall. I couldn't help but really understand what Kelsie was talking about all those times.This is one of the few paintings I have begun with any level of compositional foresight, there is still my favorite part of art making: the process. I will be posting process photos as this painting progresses.

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Artist Biography

Thomas A. Drakulich was born and raised in Reno, Nevada. He attended Truckee Meadows Community College and the University of Nevada, Reno where he received his AA in Art History and his BA in Criminal Justice. During his undergraduate studies, Tom began to explore the wheel-thrown vessel as a means for creating large form sculptures. His works interweave figurative, narrative, and abstract elements that relate to both his personal ideologies and aesthetic interests. Tom is currently working on his Masters Degree in Fine arts at UNR.

Artist Statement

In my art practice, I take a visceral approach to presenting the idea that we exist in this world as fleeting agents, relentlessly tied to the earth and to our mortality. My work begins with the play between dynamic elements within their respective environments, and it ends as a presentation of the way that my memory, perspective, and history effectively shape and relate my views on the human condition and the world around me. My work exists in the in-between and in the enigma: seeking to play upon the present that exists in absence. I constantly interweave a visual language that is both familiar to the mind, and entirely obscure. Each work becomes a series of action and contemplation. I capture and then expand upon moments of my creative spontaneity to synthesize situations, wherein, the living and the dead exist collectively as fleeting agents within a greater static context—be it a landscape or a contrived human tradition. Mortality and the earth are the dominant themes in my work. I use these themes, both, to relate a sense of place and perspective to the viewer, and to explore specific aspects of the human condition.