Joseph Troxler .4

   It has been a long two weeks for me. A lot of personal issues have caused me to spend more time away from working on my pieces than id like to admit. I have, however, been spending more time researching, taking photos for reference, and setting under drawings for my paintings. At the beginning of this semester my thought was to not research on fear, to do the least amount of research possible to make it the most personal.
       After feeling like some of my ideas were growing stagnant I felt like research was a good option to get the creativity flowing. I began researching fear, what people were really afraid of according to university studies. Then I dipped into crime statistics, which were extremely fascinating and also frightening. The merger of these two areas of research have provided a much needed breathe of fresh air to my work, and my thought process for this thesis.
   Going forward I will continue to research my topics, but remain set on encompassing my personal fears and anxieties. My opinion has shifted on research because of the much needed weight it brings to what i'm creating. Personal experience is no longer suitable to be the sole source for my work because the level of intricacies interwoven into some of my concepts. It will take the minds of far more educated people than I to provide a more stable foundation for my concepts.
  Below you can see three pieces still in progress, and mostly sketched out. The top piece can be viewed in the round, and will have the same images on the other sides. The middle image is a portrait of my younger brother. The majority of this painting will be hidden by panes of wood, forcing viewers to peek into any areas they can, or wish to, in order to view the painting. The last image is of a single piece, three laptops, which have been the heart and soul of my research lately. I'm not planning on sharing the details of this piece entirely until it is ready to be shown.