badness

Artistic frustration mixed with missed deadlines mixed with disappointment and smelly jeans.

Taking all I can muster to not throw out the canvas and start over.

books.

I had a final project for my drawing course last term, as aforementioned in this blog, and it did not turn out so well.

I just didn't give myself the chance to do fantastically. Chose to paint instead of applying drawing techniques, used really crumbly old books, was way too ambitious and didn't give myself enough time to execute the plans. It was just all rushed & in desperated need of polishing.

Below are two parts out of the five I did for the final piece.
"Good Wives" acrylic with collage, on a book.

"The Secret" acrylic, collage, book.
First time I decided to do a (part of a) piece on queer issues.
I guess I feel as though the more we talk about it and secularize it, the more "unnormal" we're making it. It's not like people do art about "straight" issues.
Sex is sex, and that's complicated enough.

at the tone, please leave

TeleCity(E)Scape

Here's a secret, I have telephonophobia.
or, more accurately, a fear of speaking on the phone, not the concrete object itself.
(working as a receptionist one year when I was 16 caused me a lot of anxiety)

Watercolour (not a good idea) with mixed media on vellum. part of my 2009 drawing course.

the surburban landscape

final project for my drawing course this term. I never give myself enough time to complete my "vision"

really, I've seen worst messes.

The roof of my "doll house". This did not turn out the way I wanted, but I am keeping it. It looks rather juvenile, and not in the "quaint, nostalgic" good way either. Like it was made by a third-grader who doesn't give a crap.
Think I should've made the strips thinner.

faaack, I still have four other books to slice up.

hard to be soft, tough to be tender

All my life I've wanted to be a redhead. I wanted that hair so badly, to be fair-skinned and almost translucent so my blood would stain my lips and my eyes and my ears and cheeks, so I always looked warm or flushed. I wanted to be a flame.
Anyways, I think I wanted more to just be somebody else, and perhaps this girl I painted last night. I like to think that she's strong, and bruised- a fighter. She had the courage to leave, or at least the ability to take control of her life. I like to believe there's a hero inside every character I create.

the old dreams were good dreams.

Untitled.
2008. Watercolour,
Ink.


And I'll Sing Once More
2009. Mixed Media
















What We Can Fathom
2008. Charcoal, graphite, mylar, ink





Embrangled

Mixed Media Painting, 2009

"Children and lunatics cut the Gordian knot which the poet spends his life patiently trying to untie."

-Jean Cocteau

Remember the times when little girls’ hairs would knot up, and when left untreated, would worsen and create a mesh of fibres that pulled on delicate heads. Remember when mothers were too unwilling to comb through that thickness, and instead pulled out the shears and chopped off jaggedly the strands that had once shone in morning light. Remember how little girls cried for the sake of their naked heads, and tears dripped onto the clumps left on the floor-- clumps that had once been flowing and free, an extension of their movements of poetry, a symbol of liberty.
In turn, what melancholia that bubbles inside can become the same strands of hair that grow on one’s head. A single weaving may swell into a nest of ugliness, eventually taking a form of its own. These emotions, these mental braids, left unattended will turn savage and greedy and will swamp a person. They will overwhelm one’s body, and take away her identity. If not cautious, a person can disappear in that furry darkness. A person can become entangled in that hirsuteness, and never come back.
Auspiciously, not everyone has the chance to disappear in that wreath of hair. There is a door within us all that leads to this shadowy place, and some are born with it open, some closed. Those born with it open are, sadly, more susceptible to leave through that door, to walk into a space where something so familiar can become a threat to their existence. This is a place where things silently crash, where people drown without struggle.
In this painting, hair is still hair. The girl is almost completely gone, underneath the nearly fluid chunkiness of her hair, her hair that she let grow out of control. Airplanes, from texts (because information is powerful) swoop from above this mess and collide with her. Out of all this chaos, the viewer can see a door, from which the girl came. Sinking, eyes closed, the girl green with an innocence that comes with most childhoods, is embrangled in something too thick and horrendous to try to untie.
Learn from this girl. She was able to survive and knows that how imperative it is to comb through what is knotted, to pay attention to things that may overwhelm her. She knows now, that if she ever has an urge to leave that door to the choking metaphorical tresses, to come back. There is so much more worth fighting for on this side of the door.

my art finally makes an appearance!

If you recall from one of my pervious posts, I wrote how I will someday upload my artist trading cards from my grade 12 art summative. Well here they are. I don't have all of the ones I created, but after a year of hard work and fun times, I have this collection of small art to remember my classmates.

For this project we had to choose a theme to go with our cards. On the day of trading, we each had to explain briefly our themes, but I got too choked up and teary to really give much of an explanation.

My theme is decay. I don't want to go too much into detail, but I felt decay was essentially the theme of my life this year. I just seemed to be surrounded by it, with relatives who developed tumours, and going crazy, and someone very dear to me whom I love also go though a rough tumble of health problems. And me, I had an incredibly rough time dealing with my mental health and its subsequent toll on my body and function as a human. We live in decay and rot; it comes from the plastic that saranwraps us and kills us, it comes from people slowly breaking you down. Nothing stays forever. eventually we just fall apart. We are delicate creatures, not meant to resist time, weather and disease.But in rotting and breaking apart in smaller pieces, is a chance for growth. So grow we will.

Here are the three pages of cards from my collection. Let's see if you guys can pick out which ones are the ones I created.



The following cards are from my two favourite people: