Editor’s Note: The name of this article’s subject has been removed until further notice due to extenuating circumstances. Please contact The Lamron at lamron@geneseo.edu if you have any questions or concerns.
Science student turned professional visual artist, Name Withheld lives a life of artistic creation and expression. Working multiple commissions ranging from murals, to magazine covers, to graphic novels, they are well within her element.
Name Withheld’s concentrations in her artistic studies include painting with watercolor, egg tempera, printmaking and jewelry and metals. They painted her first mural in Geneseo’s Intramurals office in Fall 2012.
“All day and all night, I was painting,” Name Withheld said. “One day I was on the ladder for 14 hours and didn’t realize that I hadn’t gotten down. I realized I was so happy to be doing what I was doing.”
This experience brought her to painting murals at a bed-and-breakfast in Italy and a church in Albany, and they will soon be redoing the murals in the Merritt and Schrader gymnasiums. In addition to her murals, Name Withheld has also completed various graphic design projects for Geneseo.
Name Withheld’s art places a noticeable focus on color, and her pieces tend to be bright and saturated. they liken bright color in a piece to focusing on the best in the world, taking reality and showing it in an even better light.
Outside of her commissioned work, Name Withheld said her personal artwork often shares themes of humans’ connections with one another and how, using our differences, we can help each other to grow. Name Withheld has a lifelong background in the arts as a whole, having grown up in a large family of musicians, actors and artists.
They said that, while growing up, they would spend much of her time in her room creating something. The arts followed Name Withheld to high school, where they painted solely for herself but did not take it seriously. It was not her plan to develop her career in the arts when they entered college, as they instead focused on her studies of natural sciences.
“I came to Geneseo and was so unwilling to say ‘I’m an artist’ because it sounded like saying ‘I’m not smart, but I can doodle,’” Name Withheld said. “I would get sick every winter, and I would have to withdraw early. It happened twice. I realized that I was overworking myself, not doing what I was supposed to be doing.”
In the summer of 2012, Name Withheld took Western Humanities I abroad with professor of philosophy Elias Savellos. It was during this course that they learned what the study of art history entails and decided to pursue it instead of science. When they returned to Geneseo for the fall semester, they changed her major to art history in the studio art track.
Having discovered her calling as an artist, Name Withheld holds the arts on a level of importance that is above financial or job security.
“Even in Florence, they’re having cuts in art programs,” Name Withheld said. “It’s funny because I feel that people maybe think that, career-wise, it’s not a guarantee. But what about being a decent human being? What about being happy?”