Introduction Selfie (Inspired)- Merlee Vergara

Self Portrait - Merlee Vergara

Inspired by William Kentridge, charcoal on paper

William Kentridge, Self-portrait (Testing the Library), 1998, charcoal on paper, 26 x 20".

    In terms of my personal interests, I am passionate about creating conceptual work that brings narratives to life through visuals. As with most animated films, conceptual art is the blueprint for everything, basically developing the characters and world with visual designs. By using artistic elements, artists can convey a story through these conceptual illustrations. With this interest in mind, I have taken up the path of an illustrator and am currently in my last year of the BFA program. My personal portfolio is dedicated to achieving that storytelling ability, complete with communicating the emotion and little tale of an avian boy. As I have a fondness for anthropomorphic creatures and animation, Disney, Don Bluth, and Genndy Tartakovsky have been my main inspirations. Overall, it is my goal to consistently create a style that can be easily appreciated in animation and comics and to tell stories through my work.

    Out of all the Art21 artists, William Kentridge has been quite the inspiration for me as of late due to his exceptional storytelling abilities, eerie design, and portraying political and social issues with symbolism. A specialist in working with charcoal, he has created animations that have an astonishing depth despite using only charcoal and pastels on the same canvas. Through this unusual, labor-intensive process, he produces narratives and imagery encompassing melancholy, grace, and open-endedness. Additionally, a message about the social injustices experienced by South Africans is conveyed extraordinarily well through his collection. After viewing each piece, I have been drawn to his passion for putting an end to oppression in certain sections of society to the point that I wish I could replicate it within my own conceptual art. So, for my digital portrait, I made an attempt to study his style further.

Susan Sontag Quotes & Responses:

“Although there is a sense in which the camera does indeed capture reality, not just interpret it, photographs are as much an interpretation of the world as paintings and drawings are.”

    It has been debated whether or not photography is considered a form of art due to its multitude of purposes, artistic or not. While it does capture a mirror of reality, it still carries as much significance in interpretation as paintings do. Take a look at this celebrated photo by Diane Arbus capturing the awkward tension between childhood tomfoolery and primal violence perfectly in "Child with a toy hand grenade in Central Park, New York, 1962". The picture of the boy and the grenade in it may not be the most important thing, but it evokes a deeper meaning, just like a painting might.


“Photographs are perhaps the most mysterious of all the objects that make up, and thicken, the environment we recognize as modern.”

    Unlike traditional mediums, such as painting and drawing, photography already was dependent on the use of a device, capturing an almost perfect replication of what the human eye sees and immortalizing them onto paper. To think about the discovery of the camera obscura in itself is quite baffling. And as technology advances further, different ways to manipulate that reality visually. That realization is perhaps why photography is seen as modern in comparison to other mediums.