Launchpad Biennial

When you left, You took something important that was mine. I swear it was important, but I can’t remember what it was. Now all I have left are memories that are slowly deteriorating. I seek answers but rarely find anything at all.

I work in layers, I make images with old cameras and film. I take the film and scan it, admire it, and throw it back into my computer to create a digital negative on acetate. I take that negative and print it in the studio with cyanotype chemistry, painting the image like a haphazard chef.

With this work, I’ve begun to explore my posthumous relationship with my father, and all the baggage that comes with family. Ironically enough, my day job sends me off throughout the country, and I often try to take as little baggage as possible.

When do I become human if I’m constantly policing myself to fit within the performance of societal expectations? Why do I find agony within the pull of strings if the hands in control were never going to cut me down anyways?

My work serves as anti-government propaganda, exaggerating pre-existing conditions of the system we were born into and examining our external and internal surveillance. I’m interested in displays of control through power and the way a tilt of the hand can impact us down the corporate and social chains. So often those who hold the leash let their heads get away from themselves, so I’ve conjured a world where long-neck men roam as pillars of militarized force. Through this lens, I navigate my own relationship between nihilism and existentialism and where we fall through the cracks.

How can we tell we were ever really human at all?

In my work, I explore the profound emotional experiences that shape human existence. I recognize how our world exists in patterns—relationships are found between the modern, ancient, manmade, and natural.

I use bold, saturated colors, lines, and brush strokes to emphasize the forms I create. Certain colors possess a quality that can command attention or divert the gaze while flat lines can create sculptural illusions.

Hi my name is Ethan Newman (b.1990) and I’m a visual artist and musician from Connecticut. I received my BFA from Hartford Art School in 2018 where I studied painting and art history. While at Hartford I was awarded multiple scholarships for my work, and was the recipient of the 2018 Rudolph F. Zallinger Excellence in Painting Award. My work is highly expressive, and at times oscillates between figuration and abstraction. The mediums I predominantly work with are oil paint, acrylic, and collage. What draws me to making art again and again is the freedom involved in creating, and the process of discovery. There's an element of surprise to painting that I find endlessly fascinating. There’s just something about watching the unexpected emerge before your eyes.