Past Exhibitions > Senior Moments: Selections from the Senior Seminar

Amanawil Lemi
Amanawil Lemi

For my thesis, I will be drawing a series of portraits depicting a male figure. The manifestation of this man stems from my experiences of moving around a lot as a child. In 1992, I moved from Sudan to Egypt when I was only two years old. In 1997, I moved from Egypt to Canada when I was six. In 2005, my family and I moved from Canada to the U.S. when I was fourteen. Each time my family and I moved to a new place, I had to let go of old friends and make new ones. In some ways those friends that I had forgotten and made are the people I used to create my own identity.

This project seeks to literally create this identity through repetition. I will be using a black Bic ballpoint pen to create these images. For each portrait, I will give myself specific time limits of 5 minutes, 15 minutes and 30 minutes to complete the drawings. Each day I will draw 10 portraits. Throughout the span of the day I will create four 15 minute portraits, four 5 minute ones, and two 30 minute drawings. This will not only test my technical skill but also my memory of the figure being depicted. The varying degrees in size and level of detail correlate directly with the amount of time I spent drawing.