Artist Statement

My Oberlin College Senior Cinema Studies Project consists of executing makeup designs for six senior film projects, creating a website to promote myself as a freelance makeup artist and to showcase my portfolio, and publishing a blog with posts detailing my design process and the implementation of the designs for each film.  I approached my design work on each film as a method of storytelling through the manipulation of the visual cues of the face and the body. In my designs, I gave careful consideration to aesthetic, tone, character, genre, meaning, and story, how the images I created work to convey these, and how they interact with other elements of production to become an integral part of the impact of the film as a whole. I sought to find a way to work in a medium that is often relegated to what is perceived as superficial ornamentation, and to play with those conventions and use makeup as a method of conscious communication and art.

Over the course of pre-production for the six films, I was able to spend time with my designs that I had not often been afforded on previous projects. This time to focus allowed me to enrich my ideas, to more fully consider the implications of my design decisions on the perception of the films, and to find the best way to convey intended meaning through makeup. I developed more efficient communication with the directors and translation of their ideas and mine into a design. I learned to balance the director’s needs with my own artistic vision within the constraints of time and budget to benefit the production and enhance the storytelling. The projects I worked on also afforded me the opportunity to develop some of my technical skills as an artist. I  improved my skills with consideration to format and color palette, becoming more detail oriented and refining the way I work on  films shot in HD and black and white. I was able to teach myself the processes for life-casting, sculpting, mould-making, and casting for gel-filled silicone facial prosthetics and dental caps, for making a tattoo transfer, and for sculpting synthetic nails from acrylic.

Completing my senior project in makeup design has allowed me to work more in depth as a makeup artist and to develop skills that will be invaluable to me in my career. By documenting my work and process through my website and blog, I have created tools that I will be able to continue updating and refining and will use to represent myself as a freelance artist to potential employers and collaborators.

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