Sustained Investigation 6

We Matter

9x15

Watercolor

This is my 6th Sustained Investigation following my prompt, how can I explore politics through my art. I used watercolor and pen for this whole piece. During the beginning of the black lives matter movement, a lot of people brought in their own thoughts and used the phrase, "all lives matter" which seems right because all lives should matter, but they don't. In my opinion, these kinds of people sort of pick and choose which lives they think matter, excluding minorities, which isn't ok. I think that all lives cannot matter until minorities lives matter. In this piece, I wanted to express that and add three silhouettes of woman of color. My friends helped me come up with this idea because I couldn't decide what I wanted to make, and I built off of their thoughts. The all lives matter flag is an American flag, so I tried to make that but in more of an abstract form with less detail at the top. After I was done painting, I thought my piece looked a little bland. I wasn't sure what to add, and I remembered that when I had extra space and wanted to extend my paintings, I would add in some patterns for texture, so thats what I did for the background of the three silhouettes. I think if I were to continue to extend this piece, I would try to add more composition and detail to everything to make a stronger piece overall. Going into this, I didn't have an idea of what I wanted for the composition, but it pulled through at the end.