Tyler Atkinson

Looking back on my time as a student of art and being able to see not only the work I've created but all the memories attached to each piece, every late night, every breakthrough, and every failure documented. I thought what if there were images that had the ability to capture an entire part of your life, moments that have contributed to making you who you are today. We leave behind this metaphysical trail of interactions, and experiences as we live life, with no way of visualizing it. The idea behind this project is to translate these moments that have been lost to time into images while capturing their impact.  
 
To start I interviewed someone I knew as a way of better connecting to the life I was attempting to capture. I interviewed my mom and while that may seem rather safe, she is someone shaped by experiences that most would consider remarkable — not simply shaped by these experiences as life happened, but shaped by the times she persevered. Vocal inflection of the interviewee was a way for me to gain insight into their lives and a better understanding of how the experiences they recalled have impacted their lives. These emotions that escape through the voice are what I strive to depict in my drawings through a focus on line and shape, as an example a moment of vulnerability would be represented by a shaky or blurry line. Much like shapes are formed by lines, life is formed by experiences and this intersection of experiences is what I sought to explore. My artwork captures the blended and overlapping experiences of life.  
 
Exploring methods of mapping life moments led to experiments with three dimensional drawings in an attempt to better capture the complexities of a life lived beyond the two dimensional limitations of a page. Using materials like twine and wire to create drawings inside of a five foot cube; this free floating intersection of materials and the way they bend and twist were representative of the experiences and interactions of life. However A full return to two dimensional image making has been forced by the Covid-19 pandemic, leading me to shift my focus to the smaller moments that follow an individual through the rest of their life. In an attempt to document some of the most impactful moments of a life I found myself sometimes lost in the confusion that are details of the past, which may have led to creating images that more strongly represent the emotional experience these memories induce rather than being able to capture the memory itself. This was a practice in capturing the past and having time work against me as I tried to translate faded memories as they were greatly influenced and skewed by perspective and emotional impact.  
 
This project started with plenty of uncertainty, like much of my work does, but after getting lost in the process of communicating emotions caused by moments of the past I do feel that this project was one I was glad to work on. Getting a glimpse into someone else's life and connecting to the experiences that have made them who they are has made me thankful to be an artist and more so to work on something like this.