Mary Weisenburger BFA Painting Thesis Spring 2015

The Joy of Painting, Experiments in Viewing Pleasures

At its heart, this thesis is an extended, formal study of undecidable objects, which is an object comprised of a 2D subject that is instantly and subconsciously interpreted by the viewer’s visual system as three-dimensional. Importantly, forms of the undecidable variety could not exist physically in a 3D world. Undecidable objects are of an unsettling nature because of the brains’ instant visual interpretation of 2D drawings as 3D objects. This thesis paper aligns my interest in how we look at these objects of undecidability, in order to unfold their qualities of confusion and uncertainty.

When viewing non-representative art there is a system, specifically I’m talking about the array of operations that define, label and flavor our detectable world. Numbers of bits of information: dangerous or beautiful words, dead metaphors; these forms and objects have consequences and sometimes they do not. I am about to describe my saga of making abstract art and viewing, a personal account that has aligned me with my understanding of the Joy of Painting. Within my own abstract painting, I embraced the fact that there is little consequence in the realm of the imaginary; it is an open terrain with visual power that offers a safe place to create a romantic compositional disasters.

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Spring 2015