couldn’t continue at that speed forever, but I couldn’t continue without knowing what I could do. As I learned more about what it was I was doing, I started to gain a portion of my control back. Having transitioned from relaying the explosiveness of that experimentation in my work, with built up layers of trial and error, to more precise and planned forms, I was able understand myself more as an artist and adopt the techniques I liked most in my work. 

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I incorporate fashion and body image in my work because it inspires my art both positively and negatively. My color scheme has always been important to me because of what it represents, the black and white for the clear-cut and the perfectionist in me and the burnt orange for the insecurities and everything I’ve hated but have grown to love or still in the process of doing so. Although I still create pieces with my original color scheme, I have since added more colors into my palette. The addition of colors stand for a transition from internal conflict to the suppression of it. The suppression, a result of glorifying the source of conflict by basking in the life that it promises. It is living alongside the mainstream and doing the best to blend in—in a world where we blend in by gaining attention. A world that became a little bigger when it became small enough to fit in our pockets. We are all a little more connected, aren’t we? 

 

The girl, so lucky to have a double tap from her friends, her family, her acquaintances, and even those she had never met but never a single tap on her shoulder to see if she was okay. The self-conscious, who simply hid herself by not hiding at all, who always had it all together because she was in pieces. The subconscious, the one we maybe don’t know as well. Maybe we didn’t fully acknowledge why we placed “text” over an imperfection or hid a part of ourselves with an object or emoticon or cropped down a picture until we were okay with what we saw—or who we couldn’t see anymore. And me, why do I like myself more the less I resemble her. 

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I have started to incorporate glimpses of “perfection” in figures and abstract forms, because I don’t intend on making them look more real than they actually are. I don’t intend on making them look as human as the real humans, the ones who aren’t perfect—the ones who live and breathe. That’s why my figures are mostly limited to outlines rather than a representational human form, much like a photograph. They do look good on the canvas though, we all want to see what’s aesthetically pleasing—that’s why body image exists. I have a slight obsession with fashion as much as I hate how it can make me feel. I want my work to portray my mixed emotions and I want my work to have style as if I could wear it. If fashion wasn’t based off of its aesthetic, then we would all be a lot less easy on the eyes and a lot more easy on ourselves—in this fight the eyes usually have control. 

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I don’t assume that others can see these internal battles I speak of, just as I don’t assume one can understand both sides behind my work just by observing. The psychological battle between the human and the human-self, a disease that leaves little symptoms perceptible to the public eye while mutually blinding the eye of the beholder, often masks itself as physiological beauty. In a world that fixes what is broken and admires what is beautiful, we neglect to see when the beautiful is broken because we are too busy seeing it. The human ability to camouflage internalities in order to adapt to society is both incredible and detrimental, the mechanism itself disguises us all both consciously and subconsciously. It is uncertainty. I want my art to have that in common not make it seem any simpler than it is.