Willow Hayward

I originally started creating pieces for IB Art without truly having discovered what I had wanted people to take away from it. As you look at each of my pieces it is clear that color has been a key component in my work. I am undeniably inspired by color. I wanted my theme to focus on using color to accurately depict how I see the world, and I wanted viewers to understand just how much light there is in the world around us. My works have incorporated many different mediums and stylistic elements, and I've tested a lot of different processes to try and find what works best with my overall purpose.

It is clear that I went through a journey with my pieces, each piece having a specific goal that I had in mind. The closer you look at my work the more evident it is to see a connection between each of my pieces. For a lot of my pieces I focused on color and the human anatomy. I emphasized color where it is usually not. Using color to express different emotions and thoughts was my main goal with my original pieces. For my pieces All that Glitters is not Gold, and What Lies Within, I was inspired by Joshua Miels, an artist who uses colorful portraits to bring light to men’s mental health issues. Having grown up with a sibling who struggled severely with mental health issues, this was a topic that was very important to me, and something that I felt I needed to explore more in my artwork. I tried many different techniques well beyond my comfort zone to try and achieve this goal, including portraiture which was something I had never felt confident enough to try. Each of my pieces focused on color because I wanted my viewers to be able to instantly feel a connection. However, as my work progressed I wanted to broaden my theme to finding color and emotion in not just the human mind and anatomy but in nature as well.

For my last 3 pieces, Poppies, Lupines in the Sun, and The Mountains are Calling, I decided to focus on how color has inspired me in other ways as well. I have always been so drawn to color found in nature. Whether it’s a flower or a sunset, I’ve found that color has a huge impact on how I perceive things, and what emotions I feel because of it. I decided to focus on normal objects and highlight the colors to try and heighten the emotions my viewers feel. These last pieces were inspired by Nancy Strandlee, an artist who emphasizes her interpretation of color in the things around her. She focuses largely on nature, using small amounts of texture in her work to help her paintings come alive. I decided to use thick amounts of oil paint and a palette knife to try and create a layer of depth in my work, while also adding dimension to the colors themselves. This was something that I felt really added to my pieces, and helped me figure out my style as an artist.

If I would’ve been given the opportunity to exhibit my work, I would have organized it in a way where my viewers would have been able to easily follow my thought process and development of my theme, making sure to keep my pieces in chronological order. All of my pieces are connected by color, but the ideas and emotions behind them are what is most important.

Brainstorm

This piece was the starting point for developing my theme. I wanted to show the chaos and the calm that goes on in someone's head. I used color as a way to juxtapose the two sides of the brain. By using such vibrant colors I wanted to try and depict how the inside of my head would look, and using color where it is usually not.

Hidden Within

For this piece I wanted to take something that originally has a dark connotation, and see how I could change it by breaking it down into different colors, and adding color where it usually is not. I wanted to show that even light could be found in dark places. Keeping align with the last piece, I decided to keep my focus on color and the human body, and how color can be found all around us and in us as well.

What Lies Beneath

For this piece, I chose to explore color in a different way. I wanted to show mental illness in a visual way, and the complexity and chaos that may come with it. The color in this piece represents the hundreds of different thoughts and feelings that someone may experience in a split second. In this piece color was used to depict the world around me, which includes the reality of mental illness.

All that Glitters is not Gold

This piece was created to show what it looks like to live with mental illness. Color is the most important part to this piece. I used the juxtaposition between colors to show how someone may look “normal” to everyone around them, but there is trouble behind their eyes, not discernable to everyone. Depression and anxiety can be found all around me and I wanted to use color to try and accurately depict the reality of mental illness,and how there is much more to it than meets the eye.

Bringing Back the Color

For this piece I wanted to show how color can be found in such an unexpected way. I decided to use a heat map effect, focusing on the different layers of color that can be found when looking deeper. I used such bright colors to put the emphasis on the color rather than the subject itself, while still exploring the connections between color and the human body.

Eye to Eye

For this piece I wanted to show how color is all around us. I focused on the divide of color between these two people. Showing how they’re different yet still similar. I chose to focus on the connection between color and the human body and take a more obvious approach by focusing on color that can be found by simply looking on the surface.

Poppies

For this piece I took a simple flower and wanted to add more depth and color to it. I wanted to branch out to a theme that I could better incorporate nature into, so I decided to try to accurately depict how I see color in the things around me — focusing on everyday things and emphasising the color to turn it into something more joyful.

Lupine in the Sun

Going off of my inspiration for the last piece, I wanted to focus on something that brings me joy. I decided to keep the subject on flowers because they can have so much color and can be found everywhere. My goal with this piece was to highlight the emotions behind such an ordinary object. I chose the bright yellow as the focus for this piece because yellow is associated with joy, and I wanted to show how joy can be found in the simplest of things.

The Mountains are Calling

As my last piece in my exhibition I wanted to encapsulate my theme into one artwork. This piece was inspired by the vibrant colors and emotions that are found in nature. I wanted to take an image that could be so colorless and turn it into something that instead focused on color, and provoked different thoughts and emotions in my viewers. I wanted to show how color is found in everything around us if we are willing to look.

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