Logan Tortillotte

When I first started thinking about an inquiry for my sustained investigation, I found a world problem that I feel strongly about: environmental degradation. For the most real world emphasis on the viewer, I decided to begin with photographs to create a stronger connection with my viewer.

Photos are life as they are, and starting with a familiar scene draws in the viewer. Taking that familiar scene of nature, I twisted it to create an unnatural, uneasy, and instilling scene. The familiarity of the photo has changed. This inquiry formed: How can I create a sense of environmental urgency by superimposing foreshadowing (painted) scenes onto manipulated photos of real places? I began my process by simply putting together images and paint/ink, but as I revised and developed my process, color started to play a much larger part in distinguishing focal points and adding emphasis. I switched between symbolistic pieces and more reality driven pieces as ideas morphed, yet keeping to the SI (I did some in the beginning with orb balls and underground lairs, ect.). I experimented with alcohol ink in several of my works, and even though it did not work as well as I hoped in the beginning, I tried again later with much better results. There are two revisions pieces in this work (Orb/Gallery), and I feel that both came out much better through more developed use of color, added meanings, and composition. Overall, my works are supposed to represent the world as we know it being dragged slowly away, whether we know it or not.