Humanity is a collection of relationships and interactions that invoke awe as well as disgust. It is beautiful, resilient and noble, while being selfish, unsightly, and weak. The existence of these contradictory qualities makes human nature a concept to be cherished and ridiculed. It is a journey of transient understanding through the act of living and reflection.
All my life I have struggled with the innate cruelty that seems to plague humans. I have tried to erase this idea and reassure myself that people are good, just merely misguided. I have done my best to withhold judgment, and live and let live. However, my obsessive quest to reaffirm a hopeful perspective has become a life long struggle.
My art is inspired by this internal battle to appreciate and believe in the beauty of humanity. It is full of doubts, struggles, and loss, but mostly it is full of hope. The imagery in my art is familiar but often unknown. I use abstract figurative forms to cultivate a nostalgic confusion. In addition, I use text to show the compulsive process of reaffirmation. I have found a lot of peace in accepting that I will never understand humanities conflicted nature. Understanding everything is not vital to my happiness, however watching, describing and exploring, is important in my life and in my art.
This sounds like a familiar struggle and I think it is easy to relate to. But I think sometimes people don't always explicitly express these feelings. I think it's good that you are addressing this in your art. It is an interesting way of reminding us that we are more similar than we realize. We all want to have faith in humanity and believe that everyone has some good in them, but sometimes it's hard to trust that.
ReplyDeleteI really like your book. It's cool how you used a lot of blacks, whites, and grays. If I were to analyze this, I'd say that it symbolizes the "gray" area in life. Very rarely is anything black and white, or in the case of humanity, completely "good" or "bad". There are many variations of both. Perhaps I'm overanalyzing, but that was my interpretation. Is this the message you meant for the piece to have?