Analyzing Brian Hitselberger's Forgetting The Self

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Untitled (Erin) is a piece of artwork by Brian Hitselberger. It is a part of his collection Forgetting the Self. While many of his pieces in this collection took years to complete, this particular one was begun and finished in 2014. In this portrait, you can see the back of a girl’s head while she stares at the abstract piece to the left. It was purposely styled to look this way. Hitselberger used a book cover as his canvas for the piece. It is around 6.7 x 1.4 x 9.5 inches in size. The portrait of the back of the girl’s head, on the Chappell 2 right, was done using graphite. The abstract work on the left was done using a mixture of chalk and oil paint. The two sides to the piece have strong contrasting elements to them. The girl on the right, who is also the main subject…show more content…
It mixes a bright pink color into areas of black. The bright pink also borders the piece, sealing it into an oval shape. This side has an obvious texture to it, the mixture of chalk and oil paint creates a rigid surface. Therefore, you know that if you were to run your hands over it you could actually feel something. Whereas, if you were to do the same with the graphite drawing, you would only feel a smooth and flat surface. This piece appears to have a somewhat inwardly swirling motion, which could possibly represent a sort of black hole or abyss. Because of the different texture, color, and style used in this particular section of the artwork, it creates a greater emphasis. While it is not the subject matter of the piece, it may easily be confused as the focal point because of how drawn the observer is to it. With the contrasting elements of the piece comes strong variety. Its conflictions keep the observer interested as they try to pick it apart and find out what the exact meaning is. In his speech, Hitselberger didn’t tell the audience specifically what each piece was supposed to mean or how we were Chappell

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