Art is one of the purest forms of human expression. Many people turn to the arts to process their experiences.
Asbury’s art program helps students cultivate their skills so they can communicate their intended messages to audiences. Seniors craft a show of their work to present to campus.
Hannah Thibaudeau-Carmack is a senior art major whose show opens on Oct. 5 and runs until Oct. 23.
“Some of my earliest memories are of drawing and doodling in sketchbooks,” said Thibaudeau-Carmack. “My mom, she does a lot of watercolors. She used to draw me little cartoons to color in and I was like, ‘I want to do that.’ I want to be able to draw the outlines to color in.”
Asbury’s art program helped Thibaudeau-Carmack cultivate this craft with instruction from professors and students. She said she has learned a lot over the years about prepping for work and thinking about composition before starting a piece.
Seniors spend a lot of time preparing for their show. Themes are carefully considered and pieces to add to the collection are created gradually. Thibaudeau-Carmack said the work in this show will contain everything from pieces created last fall to pieces she’s painted this year.
When it came to narrowing down her theme, Thibaudeau-Carmack’s ideas on what she wanted to communicate to her audience evolved. Thibaudeau-Carmack’s show, titled “Who(se) You Are,” is partially inspired by the words of former Asbury professor Chris Bounds when he spoke in chapel last year about the needs for relationship and community on Asbury’s campus.
“I wanted to portray a sense of community and that no one is truly alone,” said Thibaudeau-Carmack. “I explored ‘you are not alone in what you are, you are valued, you are important,’ and I wanted to portray that through my portraits… I wanted to paint a bunch different people and [different] types of people.”
The subject of her pieces range from an infant to her own grandmother. In fact, many of the people reflected in her collection are representations of people she knows personally. She finds great intimacy in the painting of family, and she attempts to capture the emotion of her memories in her work to create more complex compositions.
In the future, Thibaudeau-Carmack hopes to teach art while still creating her own work.
“I would find a lot of joy in teaching others to improve and embrace their own love of arts.”
