people-from-pittsburgh

"I am really inspired by Flora Yuknovich’s work, I think as soon as I arrived at City and Guilds and saw her paintings I feel in love with them. I am also really inspired and fascinated with botanical studies and love visiting Kew Gardens. Within my work I try to bring the loose, bold and dynamic style of Flora’s work alongside the minute details found in floral studies, whilst recreate and transcribing classical mythological paintings."

"I am really interested in the beauty of these paintings and the dark tales that they often depict, and this battle between aesthetic beauty against the dark truth of human behaviours."

"The paintings start with a layer of gouache, blocking in colour and mapping out movement. Then acrylic paint is used for the floral patterns to intensify the placement of colours and black/grey structural lines breaking through the work. For some time now, I have been developing the use of organic floral forms to apply a different painting language when recreating these classical paintings. I am interested in breaking down the barriers between the decorative and the fine arts. So, rather than purely decorative, I see the floral and feminine forms as a different language of abstraction. In this layer, the acrylic is built up and overlaps with changes in scale to create depth. In the final layer oil paint is used, which is applied in glazes to push back areas and for the floral patterning. The oils create a unique, opaque effect as they sit on the surface."

"Art has always been a big part of my life, I can always remember sitting down and painting and drawing with my sisters, and art would always be spoken about. When I was studying the IB I then realised that all I wanted to do was make art and that’s when I decide to take a gap year and then apply for City and Guilds."

"My work is inspired by Renaissance period paintings depicting Greek mythology. I am currently focusing on The Odyssey by Homer. The Renaissance paintings represent the drama within these stories, with dynamic compositions and rich colours. I use a range of different paintings depicting the myth to create a collage on Photoshop, breaking down the classical structure and the figuration; creating contrasts between scale, composition, figuration and abstraction. From them, I create large-scale paintings constructed in layers using a variety of mediums; oil, gouache and acrylic."

"I have just completed my degree series which I have been working on in lockdown. I have really enjoyed making it, however my dream series at the moment is just being able to make work in a large studio where I can work to any scale and have space to stand back. Lockdown had really shown my the importance of having a studio and the space to look at your work."

"This year I have been looking the play Antigone by Sophocles. At the beginning of my project I tried to find as many classical painting representations of the play and then I work from these paintings to create my own work."

"The Garden of Earthly Delights by Bosch, I am obsessed with it."

"When I paint I listen to the Harry Potter audiobooks on repeat."

"Whaaaaa I’m not sure, on my gap year I worked on a super yacht which was a crazy, exhausting and bind blowing all at the same time."

"“Deems, this new pastime of yours may prove your undoing.” “Eh?” “Thinking. You’ve done so little of it in your life. This much exertion all at once…Well, it can’t be healthy.”"

"Things are going to change around here. I realize that taboos are hard to overcome, but it simply has to be done if your people are going to have any future."

"Chico’s was busy that night, the dance floor a scrummage of writhing humanity. Snowclaw couldn’t get over the noise in the place. It had taken some getting used to. He didn’t quite understand what all the thumping and screeching was about, though he knew it had something to do with music. And the dancing was completely incomprehensible. Snowy took it to be some complex courting ritual. But what did the flashing lights have to do with anything?"

"Silence hung like a boulder precariously balanced."

"“You’ve been planning moves in advance.” “As necessary in life as in chess.”"

"Look, we’re not getting anywhere. Why don’t we all return to our respective…whatever you call them. Continua, quantum glitches, Erewhons, reflections of reflections—"

"Nobody ever gained anything by playing chess with himself."

"Jeremy shook his head. “I used to dream about women like you. Hell, every guy does. You’re like a centerfold.” “Why, thank you.” “I mean it. You’re beautiful. But I just can’t believe that you’re real.” “But I am.” “You’re a computer program, for pete’s sake.” “What difference does that make?” “What difference? Well, I mean, you don’t just go around making out with computer programs. A program is just a…” “Just a pattern of information.” “Yeah. Just a pattern.” “So are you.” “What do you mean?” “You’re just a pattern of information, too. What makes you you is the configuration of data that’s in your brain. Your brain is just holding the information, just like a storage device. No difference. Your pattern is stored in a body, mine in a computer.” Jeremy was silent. Then he said, “I never thought of it that way.” “We’re both software, Jeremy. Why can’t we interface?” “I guess…well, maybe. But where did your body come from?” She shrugged. “I guess you could say that my body is just a pattern of information, too. Everything is merely a configuration of data.” “I don’t get it. But I’ll tell you one thing. I like your configuration a lot.” She smiled and kissed him."

"Fate, eh? Bloody bad luck, I call it."

"The silence was deep, yet it was the sort of restful, contemplative silence befitting and peculiar to a library."

"Tell my doppelgänger not to do anything I wouldn’t do."

"The sixteenth hole wouldn’t have gone well even if the herd of wyverns hadn’t showed up."

"The desire to rule, to dictate, is born of nothing but contempt."

"The truth lay on him like the rubble of a landslide."

"This look into the far future has lightened my heart. Simply to know that there is a future is somehow reassuring."

"So far, so good, the man said as he fell thirty-nine of forty stories."

"“It might have something to do with quantum uncertainty. ‘Quantum uncertainty’ is good for explaining just about anything that doesn’t make sense.”"

"Invoking the simple principle of translational symmetry — which in nature gives rise to conservation of momentum — led to dramatic improvements in image recognition"

"Legends are material to be moulded, and not facts to be recorded."

"Local color has a fatal tendency to remain local; but it is also true that the universal often borders on the void."

"Christ Jesus, when I come to die Grant me a clean, sweet, summer sky, Without the mad wind's panther cry. Send me a little garden breeze To gossip in magnolia trees; For I have heard, these fifty years, Confessions muttered at my ears, Till every mumble of the wind Is like tired voices that have sinned."

"I lay there in the river for a minute and gave up. When you do that something dies inside."

"Mornings, the flower-women hawk their wares— Bronze caryatids of a genial race, Bearing the bloom-heaped baskets on their heads."

"Here the Frenchman, Spaniard, and Englishman all passed, leaving each his legend; and a brilliant and more or less feudal civilization with its aristocracy and slaves has departed with the economic system upon which it rested."

"A great longing for that happy, waltzing, music-box time came over him."

"It is only men of genuine philosophical sense who can understand that the form of government is the most important thing in the world."

"Yesterday, yesterday, yesterday—tapped the feet of the mare."

"It was good to be alive. Black Girl gathered herself under him and thundered down the Pike towards Lancaster. Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow—was the tune her hoofs now seemed to be drumming on the road away from yesterday."

"He regarded all the country he was looking at as still a part of the United States, some of the inhabitants of which needed to be reconverted to the faith of their fathers—by apostolic blows and knocks if necessary."

"Southward, two mighty ranges of the Appalachians shouldered their way into the blue distance like tremendous caravans marching across eternity."

"A victory for any side is a defeat for every side now."

"This Appalachian country was not huge, barren, and monotonous like so much of the West. There was nothing here to suggest that perhaps one had always better be moving. On the contrary, there was a kind of overtone from the countryside that whispered, "Tarry, traveller, tarry. Here is comfort for the soul of man. Here are verdancy and peace.""

"Grow up as soon as you can. It pays. The only time you really live fully is from thirty to sixty, provided of course you are healthy and don’t die. No, the young are slaves to dreams; the old servants of regrets. Only the middle-aged have all their five senses in the keeping of their wits."

"Religions change; beer and wine remain."

"What is even a wise book but a blast from the lungs made visible to the eyes?"

"Between the villages of Aubière and Romagnat in the ancient Province of Auvergne there is an old road that comes suddenly over the top of a high hill. To stand south of this ridge looking up at the highway flowing over the skyline is to receive one of those irrefutable impressions from landscape which requires more than a philosopher to explain. In this case it is undoubtedly, for some reason, one of exalted expectation."

"Every new generation...is a fresh invasion of savages."

"Practise...what I call a decent mammalian philosophy."

"If there was anything "new and better" about America it was the hope of peace—of peace on a more secure, vaster, continental scale than had ever been tried or attempted before. Oceans to the east and west of her, arid wilderness to the south, and the self-same friendly people to the north—the nation could not be seriously threatened by anything but disturbance from within."

"Her father was the operator of a Carthage furniture factory with a better than average income. Thus, Annie was accustomed to the good life, a gracious home and the admiration of her fellow students."