Statement:

I had a lot of fun painting cute girls with blood and weapons last semester but it also felt constricting to draw and paint essentially the same thing over and over. I had originally planned to draw whimsical pieces with pastel color schemes but when I added the blood I instantly fell in love with the outcome. One of the mediums I also employed in these works were crayons. They were enjoyable to use and brought about a sense of childlike excitement. What it taught me though was to always seek creative ways to keep the love for my topic alive. There were moments when I worked for hours and hours on end.

This semester I was focused on letting loose and using whatever materials I desired. I fused my earlier ideas of pastel colors blending with bright gaudy skin tone colors and set the figures within backgrounds influenced by 2020’s stay-at-home culture. The general idea was to bring the viewer into the picture's personal space and try to catch their eye with something new every time. I had originally thought the bright color scheme would be too blinding for the viewer to look at so I shifted my thinking onto what my subjects might be and Rococo paintings popped into my head. They featured a lot of cute girls. There are numerous elements of Rococo paintings to take inspiration from: the way the painters pose the women and their clothing, the make-up, and their general detachment from the viewer's gaze. The colors also play off of each other; one person’s color scheme influences another, in a game to see a new thing each time.

The backgrounds are influenced from staying at home this last year and what elements from a home could be used as a backdrop. The characters are sitting on the floor chilling, or surrounded by plants, making funny faces in the mirror, or in the living room reading; all perhaps aware of but detached from the viewer's gaze. They are modern versions of Rococo girls; their clothing, settings, and colors updated. 

The mediums used for my pieces are acrylic/oil paint markers, gouache, watercolors, crayons, canvas and wood circles. They are mediums I had always wanted to try but never found a reason to until now. There is an excitement, like there was in the crayons, in using new materials to see what can and cannot be done. Painting on wood also fascinated me, but it felt unnecessary to try since I wasn’t comfortable branching off to attempt new things. It is liberating to grow out of this phase and explore, mess up, and try to get better. It has been a dream of mine to do something like this since my 2nd or 3rd year of college. Now that it’s over I can move onto the exciting adventures in my future, who knows what that will be!