title. project 09

Sarah Dusek

My love for art has long been connected with my love of telling stories. In this project, I explore a method of storytelling originating from East Asian culture, emakimono, narrative picture scrolls used to tell stories. Narratives were told by unrolling the scrolls in one to two-foot increments, simulating the linear progression of time and a near cinematic experience.

Using emakimono, I sought to tell the story of creation through a biological lense, sticking closely to the evolution of prehistoric life. The subject harkens back to my love of going to the museum as a kid and looking at dinosaur bones and the subsequent struggles I had reconciling this love with growing up in a fundamentalist church where evolution was a taboo subject.

So this project is some attempt to heal that rift between the natural and supernatural worlds.

What I ended up with was a twenty-foot long scroll that followed the journey of some amoebas to larger and more complicated organisms. The months spent wrestling this behemoth, I was able to improve as an illustrator and rekindle my love for painting.

This project involved working with many unfamiliar materials, the most daunting being rice paper. In addition to rice paper, the final painting includes water color, gouache, and a mixture of gold powder and matte medium. I began by first planning the composition on butcher paper, sketching out each organism. I then overlaid the rice paper, which because of its semi-translucency, I was able to paint on and see the pencil drawing on the butcher paper beneath. Fine details were done using gouache. After rendering all the organisms, I painted the background a solid gold, a nod to the gold leaf used in religious art across the world (specifically the gold in Japanese Buddhist art.)

As an artist, I value the viewer’s subjective experience with the artwork. I want people to think freely about and interpret the work as they please, whether it be about science, religion, or the supernatural is entirely up to them.
Ultimately, I hope people will be able to walk along with the scroll and admire the flow of creation. The goal isn’t some definitive answer or meaning, but ultimately, an invitation to ponder how amazing our human story has been.

ARTIST BIO

Sarah Dusek is a recent graduate of Furman University who majored in Studio Art and English. Her illustration work is featured in two published children’s books and promotional art of ReCraft Greenville. The fall of 2020, she will be moving to Japan to work as an English teacher, where she hopes to also study East Asian artwork and grow as an illustrator.

Sarah is available for remote freelance illustration and writing. Her work and contact information can be found at her website sarahdusek.com.