Troubles

Lara Mathews

Warren College, Human Biology

Digital Art

The theme of this contest was resilience. I designed my piece off The Torment of St Anthony by Michaelangelo that depicts St Anthony surrounded by demons pulling at him, yet he didn’t seem to care. This, to me, represents resilience. For my own piece, I wanted to capture a similar essence, recreating the piece, in a way, with my own portrait surrounded by demons made from different mixtures of animals.


The demons in my piece represent various struggles I have had to overcome in life. While each demon doesn’t represent a specific struggle in itself, most of them are unfriendly and scary, which represents how my individual struggles have made me feel as I face them. The demons are encircling my head within the piece to represent that, when the struggles are being faced, they can seem overwhelming and can see as if they are taking over from all sides.


The facial expression on my portrait’s face is almost bored, which represents that the struggles are less effective at upsetting me as time goes on, a factor I think ties into the idea of resilience. Some are still very close to my face, representing that, while they don’t bother me as much, they still may be present in life, but part of resilience is being able to continue on with what is needed to be done despite the hardships.


The butterfly on the top right is a direct representation of resilience - that, even through hard times, good can sometimes arise and be seen. And when that good is found, that can be freeing. It includes all the pastel colours in the piece to show that resilience is only seen when there are struggles being faced.


Both the butterfly and the pastel and rainbow colours of the piece represent my general mindset when I am faced with a time that I have to be strong to get through. I tend to approach my struggles trying to find the better side of things, or trying to come to understand them from a perspective that gives me home rather than struggle.


I tried to break out of my comfort zone a bit with this piece. I used to spend most of my time drawing with black and white and have spent time recently learning to work with colour. Giving myself a new artistic project or method has been my go-to method to get out of my head when things are going rough, so I wanted to try something new to represent that aspect of what I feel makes me resilient.

Disclaimer: Many storytellers here shared vulnerable experiences, which might be triggering to some. Please see below for resources.