‘How do the works of Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Mary Cassatt, and Caroline Walker use genre art in order to show the depictions of lives ?’

The artists Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Mary Cassatt and Caroline Walker supported me in the exploration of my project as their artworks present artistic narrative and visual depictions of lives, which focused on the human form, experiences, stories of the individuals illustrated and the psychological effects they show. Their arts draw out the pictures of various lives within the society, for example, domestic life, the lives of working-class people and the lives of immigrant communities. Also, the fine line between the labouring class and the upper-middle class allows the viewer to see the shift of their emotions according to the change in settings and environments. The artists have a great connection to one another since they all use ‘genre art’ as the central point for the majority of their works. The term genre art itself refers to paintings which portray the pictorial representations of scenes or events from everyday life, where ordinary people are portrayed in a realistic manner. Its subjects typically include domestic settings, interiors, inn scenes, street scenes, and intimate scenes of the models. This visual art genre developed particularly in the seventeenth century in Holland and the term then arose in the eighteenth century in France, where Impressionist artists like Mary Cassatt refused to follow typical conventions of Impressionism by choosing the different choices of subject matter which reflects their modern approach. I myself initially became interested in the idea of recording something familiar to me in order to depict my own life. I believe that it could start with something simple like the environment where I live or the individuals, or group of people who I get along with. These ideas galvanise me to observe people and things around me more often, and this allows me to build up plans for my upcoming pieces that relate to ‘life’, where I will use images of human figures in the environment to tell meaningful stories and messages. In order to deepen my exploration, I will try to take my time to capture the subjects’ moments, then use different mediums and techniques to record them.