Kailah Antequera

Initially I wanted to represent human struggles through my art. Once I had finished my first few pieces I had realized that I kept returning to hands to represent my investigation. Compare piece 1 to piece 6, in piece 1 I used a lot of color compared to 6, yet in both pieces there were hands to help portray the human struggles. Therefore, I rephrased the question that guided my sustained investigation to: can hands be used to represent human struggles?

I started off doing my first couple of pieces in color where I then moved to using graphite, and then finally stuck to charcoal. I started off in color because I had the idea of having my pieces be more vibrant. For example, in 2 I focused more on the piece being bright rather than the composition of the hands. In my first 3 pieces you can tell I was going off track because I wasn’t focused on one specific feature in my pieces. I only focused on creating the art through the question. Then I started to portray the human struggles through monochromatic renderings of expressive hands. I used modeling and a wide range of values to create the form of my hands throughout all of my pieces.