2009 IB HL Visual Art Exhibition: Neal Hertzke

When I began the IB art program, I was convinced that I needed to learn one specific media, which I chose to be pencil, allowing me to fix mistakes easily, and to express my ideas more easily with quick pencil sketches. The main problem in using this media is its absence of color. Since my goal was, and still is toward a career in videogames design, I felt that the media of pencil would be best to work with for most of my artwork. I soon figured out however that other materials, such as pen, paint, print-making, sculpting, and others, all play important roles in the world of art, which I decided were too important to ignore, As a result I learned to use other media. I feel that the strengths of my work lie within the symbolism, and that they are all linked by a central theme, which consists of nature and Asian ideologies. My greatest problem while creating these pieces, or working in my sketchbook, was finding meaningful ideas and applying those ideas into my pieces. The artists who influenced me the most were more or less my teachers and fellow students, who all had unique and creative ideas and styles of their own. The most influential attribute of my art has always been that I respect and love nature, and that I used my fondness of Asian cultures (India, Japan, and China) to make my expression of nature more personal. My goal in this program was to express the energy of nature, by using some Asian influenced ideas (especially Japanese) within those pieces.