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arts & culture
KANSAN.COM | MONDAY, FEB. 1, 2016
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pay best first. Peace and quiet soothes short tempers. Apply artistic touches.
Aquarius (Jan. 20-Feb.18) Old assumptions are challenged. Strike out in a new direction. Make a creative plan. Get tools and supplies together. Do the jobs that
MINSEON KIM
@MinseonKim94
Last summer, Hannah Sroor, a senior from Lee's summit, Mo., took a road trip across Colorado, stopping at different places to camp. While Sroor traveled, she would create small observational water color paintings and journal about her experiences. Once she returned, she started working on larger-scale abstract representations of those paintings.
The initial inspiration for her work comes from being outdoors and traveling. Even though she often uses the same subject, her way of depicting nature always changes.
"I think being in nature can be a really intimate and cathartic experience," Sroor said. "Everyone can have a
different emotional connection to it, and that's why I'm interested in it."
She said this process is also a form of self-discovery, as she's able to find out what things and memories she's most drawn to.
Sroor, an art education major, tries to incorporate different aspects of art into her work. She said the ability to bring in different mediums she learned in class, such as ceramics and photography, has opened more doors of possibilities for what she can do with paintings. Recently, she's been exploring making big painbrushes out of natural materials from places she's visited. Rather than having a plan, her process of painting larger-scale abstract paintings is spontaneous.
"My paintings are pretty autonomous, where I am
just responding to the color or the line," Sroor said. "So, I'll make a mark and whatever kind of initiates from that, I'll make another."
Influenced by Helen Frankenthaler, an abstract expressionist, Sroor works on the floor, which allows her to move around the whole painting and become a part of it.
Her interest in art was sparked during her senior
Sroo said her current favorite work is the first painting she did when she started abstracting nature, called "Affinity for Acclivities." Inspired by a photograph she took of mountains in Redstone, Colorado, Sroo used arbitrary colors and unrealistic depictions to create a new representation. She said this painting has influenced all of her recent paintings.
year of high school, when an art teacher showed her the different potentials of art. Sroor said her teacher showed her the possibilities of incorporating art into other subjects and how art can be a multi-disciplinary tool for helping kids learn.
"Id really like to teach, and also at the time be making my own art." Steor said.
Tanya Hartman, an associate professor of visual art at the University of Kansas, said Snoor uses different imagery to project her inner world.
"Whether she is painting objects or making abstract marks, they are evocative of a state of emotion," Hartman said.
Hartman said while other students may give up and allow their paintings to be mediocre, Sroor continues working until she feels
something authentic. Hartman also said that another way Sroor is different from other students is her heartfelt commitment to both art and people.
"Her concerns have profundity. A philosophy of caring for people would interest her," Hartman said."I think she is going to be a contributor to the field for sure."
For Sroor, art is a tool for connecting cultures and communities, and a way to address problems in the world.
"We are all human and we all experience a lot of the same issues or desires," Sroor said. "So It's like a common language that people can relate to."
- Edited by Candice
Tarver
Photos by Colleen O'Toole/Kansan
Photos by Colleen O'Toole/Kansan Hannah Sroor, a senior from Lee's Summit, Mo., sits with some of her work. Many of Sroor's works are inspired by nature.
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