Sarah Lloyd:

Artist Statement:

            This page consists of a sampling of my works from 1997 to Present day. My work has always held an abstract quality and more so as I get to know my own style and how I feel most comfortable expressing myself and portraying the world around me.  My area of concentration, as portrayed here, is in painting; oil being my favorite medium, I still enjoy watercolors and sometimes dable in gouache and acrylic. I don't set out to produce art about one subject or another, I generally start by drawing a few lines or shapes, or painting a few strokes, and then an idea comes to me and it begins to take hold what it is the piece I am working on will be; I then think about color, line, balance, composition, etc. Most of my work represents something personal or environmental in an abstract way, the piece titled “Weapons of Mass Deceit” is probably my biggest statement piece and that is why I included it here, it is primarily oil on canvas, but it also includes printed out pictures of actual U.S. Military soldiers who have lost their lives in the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars placed among the stripes in the flag, I then used mineral spirits to thin the paint and create a dripping effect. In the painting titled “Whirlwind” I used a palette knife a lot to create a lot of actual textures throughout the piece.

 3-Dimensional work is not my favorite genre to deal in, I did include one of my 3-D pieces, “Movement in Music,” created by drilling holes in a thick piece of plywood and attaching dowel rods of varying thickness and lengths and then painting the whole piece in acrylics. Beyond that, and the ten paintings I have included, the rest of the portfolio represents my flexibility and capability to work in a variety of areas: charcoal, ink, printing, silkcreening, photography, markers, colored pencils, and digital art.

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Teaching Philosophy:

 

            As a teacher, I want my students to learn and appreciate art and its history in a way that is relevant to them, important to them and beneficial to them. In order to achieve that, I believe that first and foremost a classroom must provide a warm, inviting and safe environment where students feel respected and comfortable enough to express their views, ideas, feelings and skills in both verbal and visual methods. My goal is to always build positive, mutually respectful relationships with students and to foster those same relationships throughout the classroom by modeling professional, respectful, yet fun, relationships with my own faculty peers. I truly feel that building a positive rapport with students is of utmost importance to attain a sense of unity in the classroom and throughout the school; it is important to make sure the students know that they matter and that you care about them not only for the class period(s) that they are with you, but that you care about them as individuals and as a whole.

 It is my belief that art is a subject worth knowing, loving, creating and interweaving throughout all of the core subject areas. It is for this reason that I strongly believe in cross-curriculum lessons aligning with what the students are learning in math, social studies, history, literature and science whenever possible. I truly feel that collaborating with my peers is a great way to make sure that students not only attain, but retain, and truly learn all aspects and/or uses of each subject or era as it is introduced. Incorporating subject matter from each area of concentration allows students to better generalize material, rather than perceiving the content as limited to one particular area of learning, and will allow students to explore a variety of perspectives and expand knowledge beyond enclosed areas and relay that knowledge to differing contexts.

I feel that students should be able to walk out of class with a better understanding of what they were introduced to, covering the many forms art can encompass, whether it be drawing, painting, found objects, printmaking, digital art and graphic design, etc. In order to do that, differentiation has to be planned and implemented so that every single student has the opportunity to learn and appreciate the topics and skills as they are introduced. As an art teacher, I love to challenge my students to become independent, objective thinkers, I fully believe in teaching analyzation of artwork and provide ample opportunities in a variety of ways for the students to look at a piece of artwork and form their own opinions and critical analysis’ of the piece.

I have wanted to become an art teacher since eleventh grade, I felt restricted in my own creativity unable to realize my true potential until I entered college. I want to provide students with an outlet to create and explore all that their imaginations will allow and beyond. I will always give examples, demonstrations and relevant history of artists and styles and movements and eras, but when you give a student the freedom and even the momentum to go beyond what they have previously held to be their limitations, the possibilities are endless, and the results usually surprise even the students!. It is my aim to be a positive influence and to invoke a lifelong appreciation for fine art and I hope that the knowledge and on-the-spot problem solving skills that they acquire in my classroom will stay with them and be applied in their future studies and in life in general.