Alyssa Henderson

In my investigation, I show visual representations of my experiences and how I've grown from them. My inspiration for these works comes from the challenges I’ve faced: the mental and verbal abuse I've endured, my absent father, and the death of my grandfather. I also pull inspiration from the better experiences I’ve had: my mother always being there, being able to break free from the abuse, and learning to accept myself for who I am. My goal in my series is to show people that you can always get through even the toughest of times and in the end, you can grow from it.

Each piece has a huge sense of symbolism to the experience I am referencing. An example of this is how I used a table with a faded water stain in Absent Plate, symbolizing how my father used to be in my life but was never truly there. The grayscale color scheme portrays the feelings I went through in my difficult experiences. Meanwhile, the colorful and bright color scheme shows how I’ve grown from those experiences. During my process, I have realized that I always pair a piece about a bad experience with a good one. I realized I did this so I didn’t get pulled back into the darkness of my past. In addition, each piece has looser paint strokes to show that it is a memory. This allows me to experiment with not making all blending and paint strokes perfect.