My field of study for my honors thesis is Art, Drawing. My thesis is going to study the relationship between the human body and tattoos. I am interested in the idea of using the human figure as a canvas, and creating artwork that has an image within another image. I have always found tattoos to be very compelling. I am curious to discuss with people why they got them and the meaning behind them. My goal is to create between 8 to 10 original drawings or diptychs. These pieces will feature the human body drawn in black and white using charcoal, and the tattoos will be drawn with ink and include color. I will conduct research on this several ways. I have found people I know whom have different types of tattoos, and I have photographed them for photographic references to draw from. I will take pictures of about 10 to 15 different tattoos so I can have options and choose those that will work best. I then will interview the people I have photographed, asking them various question about their tattoo's meaning. I am also researching other artists who have used tattoos as a subject for their own work. I will find at least 5 artists who use tattoos in their own artwork and analyze and cite their work in my written assessment, as well as any other influences upon my work.

Full Disclosure, an honors thesis painting exhibition presented by Bachelor of Fine Arts candidate, Natalie Saez, strives to visually document the mental progression of people undergoing the transformative process of art therapy. Although often times a term that brings people on edge under certain circumstances, full disclosure brings to light information that otherwise would not have been expressed. In this same way, the process of art making - specifically referring to art therapy - presents a form of full disclosure. Varying stylistic approaches ranging from naturalistic to more abstracted portraits within the exhibition serve as a way to depict the uninhibited expression that results from the creative process.

BBW is about the complexities of self-love, self-hate, and the fixation on the fat female body. "BBW" is largely used in the porn industry to reference the fetishization of fat womens' bodies and the hostile culture that surrounds it. This exhibition is meant to confront this toxic attitude and features large-scale oil paintings depicting Big Beautiful Women who chose to share their bodies with the Internet. Fat girls live their lives being told they're unattractive, inadequate, and undeserving of love; BBW is about challenging this notion using size, a sexual gaze, and composition to render simple "camera-phone selfies" into sexy, provocative pieces of art.

Necessary Objects is a solo painting exhibition examining feminine gender performance through the lens of beauty products and the commercial imagery through which they're sold. Many young girls form a feminine identity through the world of beauty products, their related media, and the rituals of makeup application. By using still life and pop-inspired imagery, Necessary Objects reveals how the seemingly innocuous act of "putting on one's face" can result in a complicated, sometimes neurotic, relationship to one's own appearance.

"Should I kill myself, or have a cup of coffee?" \u2014 Albert Camus Making a decision between committing suicide or continuing about the monotony of a life void of meaning can be surprisingly difficult to make when all human logic entices us to do the former. In fact, doing the latter seems definitively humanely impossible. In my art series "The Absurd Man", I visually analyze a variety of human reactions to absurdism, drawing from absurdist texts as well as personal experiences to force upon the viewer, recognition of the discomforting reality of human frailty.