Expressing Emotions Through Materials

Over the course of the last two years, I have been making art and experimenting with different techniques and concepts. I specifically wanted to learn how to manipulate and combine materials to show different emotions and create different feelings. The eight pieces that I selected were all similar in some aspects and some of my pieces were paired. These pieces all had symbols and motifs that were important and had meaning to me. I ordered them by when I made them because I wanted to show the change in materials, my emotions, and the way that I manipulated the materials. These pieces all work together because of their similar subjects and the way that I came up with my ideas. For some of them, I used past memories to be inspired on what and how I wanted to convey my feelings and what they meant to me. “Untitled 1” and “Untitled 2” were made consecutively and I was inspired by “Untitled 1” to make “Untitled 2” because using acrylic paint was something I had never used before and I wanted to go back and create another piece with very similar subject matter and have multi-media instead and to see how I could manipulate those materials to show similar subjects in a different way. “Reading Through a Grapevine”, “Facade”, and “What Will Wilt First?” were also grouped together because I used the same print on each but the material on placed it on created a different meaning, both showing some beauty on more solemn materials. These pieces represented feeling mixed emotions, wanting to feel more positive but still having negative emotions that were starting to be overwhelming and more apparent.

After the process of making all of these pieces, I realized that I repeat a lot of motifs and subjects and don’t usually go for a positive feeling. In some of my pieces I had started out with a more positive mindset but as outside factors such as school work and how the pandemic changed and impacted my life, I started to have a more reserved and negative mindset, struggling to find a positive light in things as things changed so rapidly and I could no longer do some of the things that I loved. Some of my earlier pieces that I selected were full of nature, colorful, but still looked a bit chaotic but as I continued to make pieces they became less bright and contrasting positive and negative emotions. The Black Lives Matter movement and politics also inspired one of my pieces because of the anger that arose from it and how poorly some politicians handled it. The way it was covered in the media like the newspaper also made many emotions arise so I manipulate the articles that I put together to show how poorly America respects people. A theme that emerged from my pieces were there is always a way to create and show positive feelings as well as feel them even when there is too much going on or more dark feelings. I started out making pieces that had a lot of overlapping and many subjects but as I continued I started to see how I incorporated nature. To me, being in nature is a calming, happy, and beautiful place. The ways I included it also showed different emotions depending on the color and the rest of the piece.

I faced some challenges and discovered new things about myself and in making art. Most of the materials that I was using were ones I’ve used before and some additional new ones. I wanted to find another way to use them and manipulate them to create specific feelings. By working with different materials and color palettes I discovered how to show more emphasis and play around with negative space. I discovered that I really loved using new materials such as charcoal and struggled with others like acrylic paint. By learning about charcoal and how to use it with the addition of white charcoal was something I was really proud of because I had never used it before and was aware of how much emotion, depth, and detail that I could create.