The Grit in Grace

Throughout the creation of my Capstone Project, I knew that I wanted to explore the idea of the duality of the Southern woman’s experience. The need to remain tough as nails while also being as graceful as a swan. The juxtaposition of camouflage and dancers remained on my mood board throughout the project. While looking through photos, I found an old aerial image of debutantes dancing with their escorts. I began to see the beginnings of a pattern in their movements. After experimenting with the image in Photoshop by posterizing it and shifting the dancers until they formed a balanced, continuous repeat, I decided to paint each dancer by hand. This further abstracted the figures and transformed them into a camouflage. The dancers were altered very minimally in Photoshop, as the final repeat was entirely hand drawn.