Kelsey Blacklock

Lansing, MI

Drawn 2020 oil on canvas, 24 x 20 in $400

Kelsey Blacklock is a painter from Louisville, KY. She holds a BFA in painting from Herron School of Art and Design and is currently pursuing an MFA in Studio Art from Michigan State University.

I make paintings of the midwestern landscape to learn how to live in it. What broader system of value is reflected in the nondescript places I see every day, and how does it extend to other facets of our communal life? Looking closely at the landscape complicates the well-worn stories that claim separateness is possible. The paintings look closely at what gets in the way.

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Untitled

Kelsey Blacklock

 Analysis By: Jo Banister

 Immediately upon viewing this painting, I was drawn to the fact that the recognizable figure in the piece is shown only partially with their back to the viewer. This composition technique, whether conscious or not, mirrors the Romanticist concept of the Rückenfigur to me. The Rückenfigur is a lone figure shown with their back to the viewer, normally shown contemplating a landscape view. The figure is meant to force the viewer into seeing the view from that figure’s point of view – in the case of Romanticist landscape, to force the viewer into a sublime experience drawn from nature. This piece takes the idea of a Rückenfigur and brings it into a contemporary setting. Instead of the viewer feeling the loneliness and longing for nature in a sweeping landscape, the viewer is made to contemplate the unnatural, the mechanical, or the modern and how even without the natural beauty of a landscape, the figure is still an isolated person longing for some experience that takes them outside of the loneliness of their isolation.