Mirrored - Aubrey Lozoya

Aubrey Lozoya -

All of my art pieces relate to my emotions in the present moment, whether they were good moments, or moments where I was really struggling. Expressing emotions on a canvas is a really good way for me to cope and get through anything that has come across as a challenge throughout my highschool years. My pieces show my interests from the beginning of IB art, and up to my senior year. I was experimenting with everything that I could, in order to find what makes me comfortable and feel confident in my art skills. I use colors to express my emotions, with cool and bright colors representing peace and content, to black and warmer tones to convey negative emotion. The main artists that influenced me are Andre Derain, Yuumei, Bill Schmidt, and Sean Brennan.

The overall theme for my bodies of work is feeling what I feel in the present moment. Throughout my first two pieces, I used a lot of bright colors because I was feeling delightful and settled. Although throughout my third piece and up to my sixth piece, I didn’t have that feeling that I once had during my junior year. For example, in Aubrey Lozoya, I focused on using a lot of bright colors to represent where I was at when I felt settled. Another piece that helps others see where I had good moments is in the piece Phoenix. I had really good experiences in Phoenix, Arizona, therefore I used a lot of color to represent how I felt. In Static, I started to feel like things were going downhill, and the best way I learned to cope with negative emotion was to put it on a canvas. The Witches Secret and Fear Street were two art pieces that helped me learn to become more confident in my own interests, and also a coping mechanism for helping me get through teenage breakups. These three pieces have a lot of dark color, showing that I am able to express myself through paper, which helped me move on. Player 67 is a piece I used a lot of bright colors such as light green and pink, to express how I started to feel better about myself. In both pieces The Witches Secret, and, Player 67, are two pieces that made me comfortable to express my sexuality and accept who I am as a person. Both pieces include two women that I love, and being able to express it in art not only helped me find my art style, but also stay confident and not let others opinions get to me. The next two pieces T.T.F.Y, and, Enlightenment are two pieces with my current emotions from January through March. T.T.F.Y is a personal experience of mine when I went through another heartbreak. The heart represents me being sewn up, and letting go was the only option for me to be free. I used red to attract the most important pieces in the piece, which are the main components of what I saw through that moment. Enlightenment is my last piece, where I use bright colors such as yellow, pink, and white. These colors are based off of chakras that I have been focusing on re-aligning. The colors indicate that I am free, and all the pain that I went through was for a reason to help me grow as an individual.

Throughout my body of work, I had a lot of different art styles that I have experimented with to get an idea of what I felt comfortable with. I started with LoFi, to Fauvism, to Baroque, Contemporary, and Post-Impressionism. I stayed with acrylic paint and colored pencil for a while only because I felt afraid to try something new. I now use watercolor not knowing how comfortable I would feel using the medium. When putting all of these pieces together, all of them combined seem unrelated. But rather than focusing on the objects or people, the use of color in all pieces expresses my personal experiences and how I grew as a student.

Aubrey Lozoya, acrylic and marker, 22.8 x 27.9 cm

This piece is a self portrait of how I looked last year during the beginning of Junior year. I wanted to capture the exact moment of how I was feeling by using cool colors to resemble the cool and enjoyable evening after a Cross Country practice. I was inspired by an artist named Yuumei, who illustrates a lot of LoFi pieces. The colors shown in my art piece helps others see how my state of mind is good and nothing in life is stressful. Through this piece, I experimented with a new art style to express present moments.

Phoenix, colored pencil and marker, 22.8 x 27.9 cm

Based on the location with replayable memories, I drew Phoenix, Arizona with a lot of color so it resembles my love for that location. I was inspired by the artist, Andre Derain who uses fauvism and focuses on landscapes with bright colors. By adding as much color as possible, and removing black and replacing it with purple, I wanted to capture how much going there made me feel good. I blended the colored pencil, rather than using water color because I don’t feel confident enough to use a new medium.

Fear Street, watercolor and pen, 45.2 x 59.7 cm

This is the second piece to my first Fear Street painting. The movie to me is very comforting and helped me get through a lot of tough challenges throughout August through November. I used watercolor again, giving me a lot of confidence with blending and it was my first time painting on a big piece of paper. The lighter colors such as, green, blue, purple and pink resemble a spark of motivation I had even though the bigger picture is just about two of my favorite villains. My main effort for this piece is to make it seem like an exciting movie poster you would see in the movie theaters. Sean Brennan who is the art director of the three trilogies, made the Fear Street posters with neon effects, and I was inspired to make one with only watercolor to fit in with my art style.

Player 67, watercolor and pen, 22.8 x 27.9 cm

Inspired by the Netflix Series “Squid Game” by Hwang Dong-hyuk, I painted another one of my comfort characters named Kang Sae-byeok. I used lighter colors in this piece such as pink and green to portray my emotions. I felt very happy making this piece and I felt like I was piecing myself back together. I got to experience my own interests, and because I am more comfortable with my sexuality, I am able to express what I love even though I am still terrified to put it out there.

T.T.F.Y, acrylic and pen, 60.9 x 60.9 cm

This most recent piece meaning “Time To Forgive Yourself” is an idea of mine that I unfortunately had to go through in order to understand self worth. The heart on the bed has a lot of meaning to me because it symbolizes me talking to a certain someone who broke my heart the first time, and going through pain the second time. I used red to make certain items in the overall piece stand out, such as the phone, the T.T.F.Y card box ,and the heart, which to me are the most important pieces to the art. Out of all my pieces, this piece has the most meaning and the most expression I had put in a piece.

Static, gouache and acrylic, 20.3 x 40.6 cm

Around May of 2021 I felt emotions that I did not know how to express out loud. I called it static because of the feeling of annoyance that always sneaks back to you. Just like when you build up friction on accident and get shocked when you don’t mean it to. The pink around the skull resembles the fuzzy feeling you receive when getting shocked. Because opening up is a hard thing for me to do, I painted it on a canvas, with a new material that opened me up with my confidence in my art skills.

The Witches Secret, watercolor and pen, 22.8 x 27.9 cm

Inspired by “Fear Street 1666” by Leigh Janiak, I painted a comfort character of mine throughout my first half of my senior year. Because color means a lot to me, I used a lot of dark tones to give off this negative space of fear and also disappointment which was how I was feeling. This film made me feel more comfortable with my own sexuality, meaning it gave me confidence within myself to be more open minded and free. I was inspired by this movie because it felt very similar to my experience of not being able to show my love for someone I used to love dearly.

Enlightenment, acrylic and pen, 25.4 x 50.8 cm

This is a second part to my T.T.F.Y piece. This is all from my personal experience, I have become more open with spirituality, and have come to a realization that nothing lasts forever. The use of color on the aura of the figure is how I see my own aura, and how much I have grown as a spiritual person. I added the question, “what’s holdin’ ya back?” because I had this tendency of holding onto things that no longer serve me a purpose. I believe that asking yourself this question can help people realize why they weren’t growing to become a better individual.