Concentration I

Interior Versus Exterior

This body of work revolves around the conflicting sides of my personality. The pieces show that what I portray or present to the world around me in terms of my emotions does not correlate with what goes on inside my mind. My outward expression often contradicts what I am really thinking or feeling and what I would rather be expressing. My pieces bring out the multiple angles of my personal identity.The work emphasizes contrast, and it approaches emotion both abstractly and representationally.

Throughout my work, I have mainly explored two general sides of my personality.The first is what I choose to express to others-a more emotionless and tightly controlled demeanor. The other side is what I choose to keep hidden in my own head - much more expressive, articulate, or passionate behavior. In the beginning, the grid or square arrangement was a design used to show the split or detached nature of my personality as a whole. Stark contrasts in repeating patterns also represent the difference between my outside - an organized motif - versus inside thoughts - a chaotic motif. Later, my work became more organic and representational. Facial expressions became the focus of my contrasting theme; using serious, unemotional faces against dramatic, often enraged and screaming faces. The forward-facing singular portrait makes use of both a straight face and abstracted chaos to show hidden contradiction. The print also explore the idea of reaction to stimulus to show the calm response as well as the side that would rather run away or reach for the panic lever. The ripping or splitting of faces in several pieces symbolizes the conflicting coexistence of my two identities. This series of work also shows that art is a way for me to express that side of myself I would otherwise not be able to.