Beautiful Oops

Girl With Broken Balloon

Acrylic paint

12"x 9"

Artist Statement

For this assignment, we were instructed to make a piece of art out of a beautiful oops. The first thing I noticed was how the sharp contrast of the black ink against the white page gave the illusion that the dots were floating. After rotating the page a few times and examining the spots from different angles, I began to see the shape of half a heart in the largest spill. Putting together the half-heart shape and the idea of floating, I immediately thought of Banksy’s iconic graffiti art (and one of my favorite works)– Girl With Red Balloon. This was the primary inspiration for the piece I created. However, I wanted to make an original piece, not a copy of Banksy’s famed work, and maintain the original form of the ink spill. This prompted me to come up with my own version of Girl With Red Balloon, one where the heart had been broken, the girl was a bit older, and the surrounding background chaotic. My hope was that the new interpretation would not only represent a loss of innocence but the somewhat-recent shredding of the original piece when it was auctioned off in 2019.

I began with a piece of mixed-media paper and a few spots of spilled ink. When I first figured out my inspiration for the piece, I began by doing a rough sketch of the girl’s silhouette using graphite pencil. I marked where I wanted the other half of the heart-balloon to be and then began painting. I used strictly acrylic paint for the entire piece, and brushes I have at home. I began by filling in general shapes of the clouds with light gray, then building up my darkest points, and finally the brightest whites along the cloud’s crests. After I had finished the clouds, I filled in the girl’s silhouette with white paint, and then the other half of the balloon with red paint mixed with a little black.

I wanted the clouds in the backdrop of the image to reflect the sharp contrast of the ink against the white page. I thought this would also contribute to their chaotic nature. I made sure to push the shadows to absolute black, and keep the whites of the clouds to pure. The final cloud product was the result of many layers of paint building up to the black and white extremes. The shape, color, and (although it may be difficult to see in the picture) texture of the clouds all contribute to their contrast and mood. I kept the entire image black and white with the only pop of color being the red half of the balloon to put emphasis on the message. As I worked on the piece it evolved more and more into my own interpretation of Girl With Red Balloon and moved further away from Banksy’s original. A few examples of this were the creation of the clouds, the addition of the moon, and the decision to make the girl’s silhouette white so she would better stand out rather than black. My next step might be to do something more with the space behind the clouds, and possibly add some more black points on the left side of the page to help the art’s balance.