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Nathaniel Dodge - Curatorial Rationale
A sad truth about today’s society is the increased amount of mental health issues that people struggle with. As someone who is plagued with mental health issues, I know first hand how difficult it can be to deal with them. When presented with the challenge of choosing a theme that I could relate all of my pieces to, I decided to address these issues that I (and many others) routinely struggle with. My overlying theme amongst my pieces is ‘Life’s Struggles.’
My work specifically focuses on two sides of mental health; the cause and the effect. Through the exploration of many mediums, I attempt to portray negative aspects of life and how they can be the source for depression and anxiety. When deciding what pieces I was going to include in my exhibition, I selected ones that I felt related especially well to the aforementioned cause and effect of mental health issues. An example of ‘cause’ can be seen in my piece called “Toxicity,” which relates to the negative effects of social media. Social media can have lasting negative effects on today’s youth because of the amount of cyber-bullying and unrealistic beauty standards that are easily accessible on various social media platforms. An example of ‘effect’ can be seen in my self portrait, appropriately titled ‘Self Portrait.’ This piece illustrates the wide array of emotions that I (and others) face. I intentionally arranged my pieces in a certain order so my emotionally heavier and emotionally lighter pieces would be mixed with one another so as to not overwhelm people with all my heavier pieces at once.
My hope with these pieces is that people can connect to them because of their deep emotional messages. Struggle is something everyone must endure and overcome in life. Whether that struggle be something as serious as depression or something as simple as a headache, I wanted my pieces to be accessible for people to relate to.
Nathaniel Dodge
Self Portrait (October 2019)
Oil Pastel
10” x 15”
This piece was created as a part of my deeper theme, ‘Life’s Struggles.’ Since I started high school, my emotions have become increasingly at war with one another. The most prominent of those emotions being happiness and sadness. In the piece, happiness (represented by yellow) and sadness (represented by blue) clash with one another in a straight line. The straight strikes through my face. This is meant to represent how warring emotions can crack or harm a person.
Nathaniel Dodge
Butterfly Shoes (February 2020)
Acrylic Paint, Mixed Media
9” x 11.5” x 7”
This piece was created to be connected to my theme, ‘Life’s Struggles.’ The back section of the left shoe is yellow (which represents happiness), while the back section of the right shoe is a dark blue (which represents sadness). The combination of happiness and sadness, represented in green, is put in the front to represent the mixture of emotions that I face on a daily - not overwhelmingly happy or sad. The butterflies covering the green section were added to be representative of a facade that I put on to distract people and myself from my emotions so I can avoid discussing them
Nathaniel Dodge
Death by Headache (December 2020)
Cardboard, Acrylic Paint
3.75” x 3.75” x 5”
Something I struggle with a lot is headaches. I chose to make a skull because I had previously worked with darker themes. While I was assembling the piece, I decided to relate it to headaches. The flowing string around the skull has various colors to represent levels of intensity of headaches. Red is representative of the most intense headaches, while green is representative of the least intense headaches.
Nathaniel Dodge
Black Rhinoceros (November 2020)
Acrylic paint
8” x 10”
This painting is of the endangered Black Rhinoceros. I tried to capture the beauty of the Black Rhinoceros to further emphasize the tragedy of its decreasing population as it comes closer and closer to becoming an extinct species. This piece also serves to symbolize all the endangered species in general.
Nathaniel Dodge
Emotional Storm (October 2020)
Watercolor, Acrylic Paint, Mixed Media
11” x 17.5”
The cloud at the top of the piece has symbols representing some struggles painted over newspaper clippings of my interests. Having these painted over my likes is done to represent how stresses and other struggles can prevent you from fully enjoying your life. Raining down from this cloud onto the person on the hill are short phrases about mental health. This is supposed to represent how stress can rain down upon someone, completely overwhelming them.
Nathaniel Dodge
Butterfly Abstraction (December 2019)
Acrylic Paint
28” x 10”
Butterflies are something I relate to the suppression of mental health. Something prevalent with my journey with mental health is how much I try to avoid discussing my problems. This is why I associate butterflies with the suppression of mental health because they’re beautiful and distracting. With each panel of this piece, the background becomes more fragmented, and the butterfly becomes simplified.
Nathaniel Dodge
Toxicity (November 2020)
Acrylic Paint
8” x 10”
This piece was made to be an addition to my roster of ‘Life’s Struggles’ pieces. In this painting, there is a river of toxic fluid. Floating in the river are various social media application icons such as Twitter and Instagram. This is supposed to represent how toxic social media can be on someone and their mental health.
Nathaniel Dodge
Brainxiety (January 2021)
Acrylic Paint
9” x 12”
Another one of my personal struggles is anxiety. This piece was created to be a portrayal of my anxiety. I chose to communicate this by using a wide array of colors and patterns to look chaotic and jumbled. I chose to paint the colors in a shape of the brain to communicate the idea that anxiety is wired in one’s brain. Over top of that I drew the squiggly lines that are typically associated with a brain.
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