Mason Gatner

 Assignment 2 Ed Pien This week's assignment was to find a contemporary artist, currently living, who's work I find both conflicting and pleasing. I can safely say that Ed Pien is that artist. Ed Pien's art is difficult to understand, describe, and think about, but I find it beautiful, conflicting, and interesting, which seems to be the point. After observing some of his work, I believe that Ed Pien's art seems to be made with the intention of bringing together many conflicting elements into one piece. There are human figures with monstrous qualities, realistic figures blended with fantastical proportions and colors, giving it a whimsical quality, then conflicting that whimsy with dark iconology, with figures twisted, malformed, and, in some cases, sexualized. The art seems to be embodying all kinds of definite human imagery, while remaining ambiguous. The result is art that is chaotic, calming, uneasy, monstrous, frightening, childlike, and consistently engaging. It ch...

  Assignment 1 Mason Gatner These are my drawings for my first assignment from Drawing Studio II class at the University of Lethbridge. The assignment was to make one drawing from observation, and another that was purely chance driven.      The first drawing (above) was an observational drawing, not copied from a photo or another drawing. I wondered what to draw for this. There was a lot I wanted to draw from observation. One day, while I was taking a break, doing laundry and watching a horror movie, I looked over and saw my parent's chair, sitting there, catching light from the window and I thought, "Why am I thinking so hard about this? I like how the chair looks right now, and it's right there. Why not?" So, I grabbed my sketchbook, a mechanical pencil, a white stub for blending, and I drew the chair. I loved working on the shadows, the texture, and noticing the little details I never really noticed before, like the pattern on the fabric, or how the shadows were a...