Leaf:

i drift away and away

traveling to a new place

nearly everyday.

sometimes i move not too far,

other times,

i am completely gone.

it's a painful life, you see

not being able to stay in one 

scene.

at least back at that hallow tree

where my childhood seemed to be,

i was happy.

Madison McKnight - A Leaf of Youth

9x12"

Pencil, White Acrylic Paint, Black Ink Pen, Watercolor

2023

A painting that represents me; this was something I could not come up with an idea for. I wanted to paint a map of places that represent me, but that was not working out. I thought back to one of my previous ideas of creating something that involved a poem I wrote. I decided to try to work with this. I still wanted the vintage, parchment-type background on this painting, so I did some Pinterest searching as we all do. I found some paintings with floral outlining and I really liked them. I've always loved painting flowers and anything floral, so I knew I could roll with that. I decided to go with watercolor with the floral pieces. I usually do well with watercolor, and I'm very pleased with how it turned out. The Polaroid photo in the top right was something I had thought of doing when attempting the map. For the map, I was going to have other items scattered across it, much like the Polaroid, or maybe a pencil; I wanted to give it that cluttered desk feel. I decided to continue this idea in this painting. Polaroids can be symbolized as memories from our youth, a reminder of our past. I thought this worked well with the poem I selected titled "Leaf." This is one of the many personification poems I have done. I selected "Leaf" after painting the floral edges. It's to supposed to represent how a leaf is always on the move, it never stays in one place; it goes everywhere. This can be seen as sentimental. It can also be put into the perspective of a child moving a lot in their youth. The thought of a youthful memory represented as a leaf can move to the idea of a memory tree; the leaves being a single memory from the mind (the tree) that you can pick out and relive. The process of this painting was simple and quite easy, but if I had to change one thing, it would be the writing. I wrote it a tad bit sloppy, the words of the poem itself, while its title was neatly written. But after thinking for a moment, I decided that maybe the messy writing was a good thing. The title is written so nicely can be the older version of the child naming that memory, and then going back to their younger self and thinking of how they described it (the writing of a child being sloppier). Overall, I'm quite alright about how this painting turned out.

Madison McKnight - Be Our Undoing

9x12"

Watercolor Paint, Acrylic Paint, Sharpie, Black Ink Pen, Pencil.

2023

This is my social issues painting. It was originally supposed to represent rape and sexual assault neglect but ended up representing many other issues going on in our world right now. The issues discussed in this painting are gun violence, drug abuse, false reportage of news, abuse in general, human trafficking,  abduction, child pornography, degrading, the ignoring of the call of help,  the incorrect categorizing of crimes in police departments, the forgetting of case/neglect to solving them, amongst whatever else you can find in this image. These are major problems that need to be fixed in our world. Again, I went in with the original idea of this being a rape neglect painting, but throughout, more was added. I started with tracing the girl and painting her, but after I was finished with that, I just started adding things. It started with the newspaper, the papers, then the board, then the side table, then the light, then the camera, and so on and so forth. I just kept adding things until i was satisfied and there was a bigger message; a bigger meaning. This painting took quite a while to do because of how much detail went into it. Obviously, there are small details I would change to make it better, but overall I'm very happy with the way it turned out.  I am most proud of how the camera turned out. I've gotten several compliments on it and how it looks realistic (for a painting, of course). I decided watercolor would be the way to go with it to get the shading right, and I'm glad I went that way. Otherwise, I'm extremely happy with the detail of bruising and cuts on the girl in the image. They turned out exactly how I wanted them. Along with the newspaper, I'm happy with the way it turned out as well. It looks like a newspaper, which was the whole goal, of course, but I had some fear with the overlap and shading of the pages in the middle, but they turned out well. Overall, I don't think there's a single thing I would change about this painting. It represents what I wanted to represent perfectly and it definitely gets the message across. In the end, though, I don't think it's really about the image or the painting, it's about the message. The message is; stop the rape neglect, stop ignoring a cry for help, stop child pornography, stop it all; stop these monstrous, disgusting acts in our world. I titled this piece "Be Our Undoing." This title goes two different ways in my mind. The first is that we will be our own undoing. We will be the fall of our race because of all of the terrible things we do. The second being, be the undoing of this. You can help stop these things if you try. Obviously, not one person can stop the whole world from committing a crime, but if enough tried, it could be accomplished, at least a small portion of it.  These issues truly do need to be stopped, and you can help that; everyone can.