Philly’s Influence on Me as an Artist

Any art major, regardless of concentration, can tell you that being surrounded by art is one of the best ways to grow in creativity and skill. Back when I was narrowing down my decision on where I wanted to go to college, one of the main reasons I picked Arcadia was because of how close it is to Philly. Now in my senior year, Philly has had a big influence on my growth as an artist, ranging from how I’ve developed my art style, to giving me inspiration during art blocks, and now as a resource for my thesis research. 

The Philadelphia Museum of Art has two pieces of work that have meant a lot to me as an artist and helped push me in the direction of scientific illustration, particularly with a medical emphasis. I was fortunate enough to have an amazing art teacher in high school who taught us art history along with the curriculum, and he showed us two paintings by Thomas Eakins, one titled The Gross Clinic (1875) and the other titled The Agnew Clinic (1889). In both paintings, Eakins shows two surgeons (Dr. Samuel Gross of Jefferson Medical College and Dr. David Agnew of UPenn) performing surgeries in a lecture hall for their students. One of the paths possible for a medical illustrator is surgical illustration, which I had been researching, and seeing a fine art painting actually portraying it was very impactful on my direction as an artist. 

Being able to surround myself with fine art and even other art styles has helped shape my mindset around art and my understanding of various techniques. I am a big fan of painting in particular, and while I love painting realistically, seeing other art styles has helped push me in new directions to try other styles and mediums. The Barnes Foundation has a wide collection of paintings from Impressionist painter Pierre-August Renoir, who was known for using a very textured painting technique that showed a lot of his brush strokes and choosing to blur some portions of his paintings. Seeing artwork like this has softened my painting style over time — I will have the important parts still realistic and sharp, and I may leave other elements, like the hair, looser and more painterly. 

Finally, most recently I’ve been using the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel as a resource for my upcoming thesis project, which will be a series of paintings of iridescent jewel beetles. With the help of our scientific illustration professor, Kyle Luckenbill, other scientific illustration seniors and I made a trip to visit the academy and collect research on the subjects we want to use in our projects. Having such a close resource to access will help us tremendously to have an authentic source, people to contact if we need clarification, and gives us invaluable practice working with scientists as our time at Arcadia is coming to a close.