In my eyes, art has always been a visual approach to telling a story. When I was young, I would spend a lot of my time reading books on various mythologies from around the world. It shaped who I am as I learned the importance of morals from these stories. My exhibition is centered around the concept of the visual narrative thus the theme of “moral of the fable”. I treat the process of creating art as telling a story thus each work is my own personal interpretation of the story it resembles.

I began each piece by reading through epic tragedies of different cultures, most often the Greek, and choosing one that would fit my current creative sight. It is crucial that each part of my artwork has the narrative vision which I had chosen to avoid misinterpretation of the theme. I let my audience interpret the morals that could be learned though it is vital that the general plot is comprehensible considering that not everyone is aware of such cultural tales. Although my artworks follow a narrative theme, it is open to the viewers’ interpretation as a story can be seen differently by everyone. This expressive freedom allows for the distortion of the tale to what I see fit in my visual retelling.

Each piece of artwork is my own visual interpretation of a tale which also acts as symbolism to portray the moral behind such a story. To fit my own interpretation, I also like to distort some themes of the tale. An example of this would be my “Icarus, he who fell from the sky” painting which I also deem as one of my strongest artwork. According to the general myths, Icarus was a man who fell from the sky because he flew too close to the sun. Some interpret the story as Icarus sacrificing himself just so he could see his lover, Helios the god of the sun. In my painting, i depicted him to have wings of fabrics which obviously could not grant him the ability to fly. This was meant to be the portrayal of a hopeless dream which led him to his demise and Helios, which shares our perspective as the viewer, could do nothing but watch.

Due to the nature of my theme, my artworks involve a heavy amount of symbolism. This is most present in my black paper artwork titled “The Other Half”. This artwork is simply a visual representation of a feeling, more specifically grief from losing another. Emotion is vague and often subjective thus I had to incorporate visual means to ensure that the melancholic theme of the artwork is portrayed clearly. In this piece, color is an influential emotional factor as I used color to contrast what is missing from the figure in the artwork. This is another example of the distortion of theme and visuals to represent a certain narrative point of view.

Aside from the conceptual development of my art journey, I have also learned the more technical aspects of art. I am able to hone my skill in the art and find what is right for me which led me to love the art genre of conceptual narrative. I have also explored a variety of media, such as color pencil and clay, as I learned that visual storytelling could be done in many different ways using different techniques and mediums. This has gotten me further freedom in expressing my retelling of these myths.

My entire journey in IBDP art has allowed me to grow as an artist. Through this, I have learned the many ways one could tell a story. This has also given me the freedom to freely express myself and my own personal life journey. In a way, I am also telling the audience the story of my life and my upbringing under the guise of these mythologies and tales. It helped me understand that I could open up and express my authentic self to a large audience by establishing a personal connection of my life story and the myths as represented in my arts.