My portfolio had to deal with a very personal subject to me, and I will leave a trigger warning about the overall theme here: SA mentioned, Childhood sexual assault, abuse, and personal identity struggles.
The theme of my portfolio is a coming of age story of the year I finally started accepting the past. I was back in intense therapy concerning the childhood sexual abuse I endured from a close family member and how it was handled and how I dealt with the PTSD from those events. As well as how I tried to find meaning and freedom in my struggles.
Deer Mom
Materials: Made in oil paint on oil paper.
Overall description: The mother deer with the severed head and her baby curled in her shaddow waiting for instructions on how to continue. The clean cut and road nearby suggest the deer was hit by a car and it was a beheading that was quick and we can only hope painless.
Meaning: This drawing is supposed to represent the sudden realization of growing up and finding yourself all alone in a dangerous world. I had first told my mother about the abuse I endured I couldn’t speak about what had happened based on the fear that my family would fall apart. Often I felt like the abuse was swept under the rug and I felt very alone. It was all of a sudden very clear that I had been abandoned by my caretaker and such is represented by the clean and distinct slice of the mother deers neck. The baby sadly stays with their mothers because they have no other guidance in the world and are still fresh with their white dots and innocent in how cruel reality can be. This deer is by a road and is perceived to be hit by a car, the car being the news brought to my mother about the abuse. The news fatally striking her and showing how alone and vulnerable her baby is now she’s all alone to deal with this loss.
Touching Happiness
Materials: Colored pencil on paper
Overall description: A blue hand dipping into yellow water making ripples.
Meaning: The blue hand representing my sad emotions and needing and wanting more than anything to feel happy and dip into a yellow happy pool or water. The reaching for better for more, but only being able to touch my fingertips into it for now. (Not one of my favorite artworks, a friend mentioned it looked like a pool of pee and now I cant unsee it).
Dear God Please Hear My Cries
Materials: oil and arcylic on canvas
Overall Description: A cool toned painting with a nun statue or a Virgin Mary statue. Her eyes are closed and it appears she is in a purple background, aka it is night and everywhere looks purple and blue.
Meaning: Showing my relationship with the church and the abandonment and hypocrisy abundant. The closed eyes represent the look the other way mantra that many in the church tend to take. Its a night to represent how I often felt like I was often wandering in the dark without much hope to get out of the church as I felt it was the only way to live at the time.
Running Upside down
Materials: Marker and collage on paper
Overall description: Two people in grey/white shirts embracing with no heads. An upside down picture of a bridge.
Meaning: I drew this from a picture of me and my brother. In the photo we were around 8 years old. I drew his grip on me, as he seemed overly possessive in the photo. One of the most triggering photos of me to look back on. I tried drawing our faces, however I had multiple panic attacks and decided it was best if we didn’t have heads because our body language was enough to describe how I felt around him. I put an upside down bridge because the abuse I endured often made me feel like my world was upside down. I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to love those close to me or resent them and it often made me feel like everything didn’t have meaning. The bridge represented nothing at that time, however I feel like now it represented the need to connected the two feelings. I can still love someone and be scared and resentful of them. More than one can be true even if they are opposites.
To Be Free
Materials: Colored pencil on paper
Overall decription: A bird, specifically a Quetzal, the offical bird of Guatemala and the bird represented on their flag. Its known to have a long beautiful tail and red bellies with a beautiful green bodies
Meaning: I was adopted at a young age from Guatemala. My brother as well before me. I was difficult growing up in a house that was white dominant. I had to deal with idenity issues that lead me to feeling unstable in friendships as I often didn’t know who I was or what category I belonged. The quetzal reminds me of myself I am a beautflly unique bird that needs to fly from her past and move on to the freedom I craved. It is a symbol to me of freedom from the abuse I lived through and a sense of idenity. I drew my hope as the year was ending and I was graduating I wanted the freedom to be away from my family and move into the new version of myself. I was right as well I did become that bird I was no longer in a cage and although I still struggle with PTSD Ive learned the importance of having freedom and feeling like I can make my own choices.
Strange Paisley
Materials: acrylic and gel pen on canvas
Overall description: bananas on a blue table with paisely background
Meaning: I remember I was least convinced I wanted to add this artwork to my project. I thought it was too simple, vague and overdone. Everyone knows still life is often completed in beginning art to get the basics down. I was conflicted about this piece. However I felt it necessary to show parts of my identity. It represents many things, the paisley is a symbol of the south and southerners. The blue and yellow contrast is also often seen in my artwork around this time period to represent conflicting yet opposite emotions. The bananas were an inspiration from one of my favorite sculptural displays, “Strange Fruit” By Zoe Leonard. I saw this artwork over four years ago when I went to Philadelphia, yet it still has a lasting impact on me. It is also the starting inspiration for this piece. The overall meaning of this artwork is a representation of how it feels to be a queer teen living in the south and a white predominant neighborhood and school. How learning to grow up in these spaces can feel confusing and conflicting; I often felt out of place just like these bananas on the blue background.
“I Bought You This”
Materials: Graphite, colored pencil, and oil pastel on paper
Overall description: presents in boxes with the word sorry written over then, and green and blue mold spreading in from the corners.
Meaning: This artwork has a more obvious meaning. I often felt like whenever my dad upset me a lot and let me down or was unecssarily mean to me; he would never apologize. Instead my dad’s way of saying sorry was through nice gifts. At first I hated it, but I think now as I type this Ive accepted that’s just who my dad is and I might not be able to fix him but I do accept him and that he’s not a perfect person, but he’s trying his best and he loves me. At the time though it was a difficult period and I wanted connection and an apology. I put mold on the gifts to represent how it got old being given gifts instead of changing behavior. Mold is and was very special to me as Im a scientist and a biologist. Its a beautful species and underappreciated. At the time though that’s not what I was going for; I am glad that it has come full circle and replaced meanings as I have grown.
Mud Mirror
Materials: Oil Pastel on paper
Overall description: A self portrait of myself in dark muted colors. Mostly brown is seen and not much background apparent except a brown swipe of fingers across the paper.
Meaning: During this time period I had very little identification with myself and I often felt like I didn’t recognize myself in the mirror. This portrait was a way to express that and show how I would view myself in the mirror and how everything would come out muddly and neutral looking. The swipe across the page is reminicsint of a bloody handprint often seen at crime scenes or a murder. Symbolizing the death of part of myself that I used to be, and I had to come to terms with that.
Bunny Love
Materials: Colored pencil, and graphite on paper
Overall Description: A graphite bunny tied down on a white background (carpet/floor). The bunny has two bows and is looking to the side. Red handprints with black nails on each side as well as two knee prints on each side of the bunny.
Meaning: One of the hardest but most important views of my abuse. My childhood stuffed animal, a build-a-bear rabbit that I had loved to sleep with at the age my abuse was occuring. The rabbit represents my innocence and myself, the bows add to the youngness of the rabbit and the innocence as well. The rabbit it pinned down by strings and handprints on each side of the face reflect the imprints on the carpet where someone on all fours would stand over the rabbit. A very clear depiction of my abuse I endured and the feeling of being helpless and trapped from the years of torture and Stockholm Syndrome. The bunny is seen looking off to the side as a symbol of how I used to dissociate and focus on my surroundings when being abused. Also a sign in animals when they experience fear is the round eyes also displayed on the rabbit. The prints on the carpet are red to symbolize violence, anger, as well as extenuate who is in control. The black nails on the hands represent the black nail polish my abuser loved later in life and became a symbol of recognition in my art of them.
Cheerio Book
Materials: Cheerios, spray paint, oil pastels, hot glue on hard canvas
Overall description: An orange world with blue streaks, covered in cheerios and hotglue. There is white streaks throughout. There is also a face seemingly drowning into the canvas and the mess.
Meaning: My family used to read from a book we used to call the Cheerio book. My childhood dog Chloe used to come and eat the Cheerios from the book as we placed them down and learned how to count as children. My mother would read the book to us. There is lots of messy lines to represent how even the happy memories (yellow and orange) make me feel hints of sadness (blue) when I think about them and the abuse that was often occurring along with it. The drowning girl represents my own emotions as I struggled to make sense of the good and the bad parts of my childhood and in deciding which was real.
Getting Undressed
Materials: Color pencil on paper
Overall description: A human shedding her skin to see the muscle underneath.
Meaning: Shedding the skin = being vulnerable. At this time being vulnerable to those around me felt much like this; baring myself and hurting myself for everyone to see. It felt like ripping my skin off to show whats underneath and how difficult it was to endure. The girl is holding her arm in an almost uncomfortable position to show the shame and awkwardness she feels when she has to shed this skin and show her vulnerabilities underneath. I had to share my deepest scariest memories with my family and my therapist in order to set boundaries and care for myself in the way others didn’t. This led to a lot of growing pains as well.
Outlet of Truth
Materials: Marker, sharpie, gel pen, and colored pencil on paper
Overall description: A wall outlet with an extension cord and several cords. Set on a brown carpet and a green wall with an orangish yellow chair with wooden dark brown feet.
Meaning: This artwork has no obvious meaning, however it does have meaning. In psychology it is known that those who are lying look right up or to the side when they are conjuring up that lie. Its also known that those who are looking left are remembering things that happened such as sounds or noises. When someone is looking right down that means they are assessing and feeling their emotions. This artwork is of my therapists office. As I hate eyecontact when talking about my emotions and being vulnerable I spent a considerble amount of time looking down and to the right. Conviently she had a plug in the wall that looked just like this one that I stared at a lot. I spent a lot of time feeling emotions in that space and finally opening up about my childhood abuse. This picture represents feeling those emotions and right what I was looking at as my life first started to change for the better. Going to therapy and drawing my therapists office allowed me to cement that moment in time, it was a special place where I first learned how to express my emotions.
Raw Ice
Materials: Colored pencil on paper
Overall description: A melting ice cube on a black background. In the ice is a heart being stabbed by a knife with a pretty handle.
Meaning: Straightforward, just a heart melting in the ice being hurt. The second my heart melted from being frozen and I started trusting again I ended up getting broken up with and the pain was immediate. The ice had started melting but I ended up getting hurt before I had fully even emerged.
Road to More
Materials: Film Photography camera
Overall Description: The side mirror of a car capturing a hand out the window as the car drives down the forest road.
Meaning: A representation of freedom and connectedness with nature and life. Often I felt suffocated in my house so I took a drive to feel better it was my time alone. It was my freedom to cry, to laugh, to sing, scream, and feel alive. I wanted it to be apart of this to show how good and alive things can be even with all the bad things that happened in my life. I wanted whoever to look at the photo to feel the exact emotions I felt when I drove down my favorite roads in the summer and the fall right when the seasons change and the weather is beautiful. When I think of feeling alive I think of those moments: all the windows down blasting my favorite song of the week. This photo was also taken on film to represent the slow life and how not everything needs to be taken on a phone. I was able to create a process of development and care for my film that I would never have been able to with a phone camera and that made it all the more special. I waited for the photos to be ready and had no idea if my vision came to life or if I would have to start all over again.
Cracking the Mask
Materials: Clay, glaze, hot glue, black metal chains, silver metal chains, silver metal O-rings, silver metal eye screw
Overall description: A clay mask of multicolor is broken in half and held together with metal hardware. The tongue is blue and it has orange and yellow horns. Its eyes are large and round with big black pupils and red and black striped boarders. There is black meta chain curled around the horns.
Method: first I made the mask from clay and fired it in a bisque. The mask at this point was still whole and in the fire it broke apart in two pieces. I decided to hold it together with metal hardware. I first glazed the piece. After that was done I used a screwdriver, a screw, hot glue and a knife to put together the metal pieces into the hard bisque sides. It was very difficult as I was determined not to use power tools; I wanted it to be made and put together by my hands.
Meaning: During this year I struggled with identity and masking a lot in the face of abuse and often pushed my feelings down to over accommodate for others. This mask took the most amount of time out of all the pieces and took the most amount of time to think through. Not because I was unsure but mostly because the process was changing constantly. It was a way of representing what I hid behind as well as who I was. My heritage mixed with the unknown and my own personal experiences. Halfway through the process before I had glazed the piece and only bisqued the mask broke in two along a perfect line. This was unexpected as I wanted my mask to be one piece. It was no fault of mine but as my art teacher explained probably how it was cut when it was still in the block form. After that I had three choices: 1. glue it back together 2. keep it seperate or 3. make a whole new mask. I thought about this for a couple of weeks unsure of what I wanted. ultimately I accepted this must be an act of fate and the artwork was always supposed to end up like that. I still wanted it to be a connected piece so I decided to connect it with the metal hardware. It showed that although my identity was changing and fractured I still have a strong metal will keeping me together. It was a way to show although I am broken I am still whole in myself. The colors were made on a whim based on my emotions that day. however the eyes were special as I felt the contrast between yellow, white, black, and red; gave the eyes an intense look. I wanted to show a bit of instability with the colors and calm with the ombre horns. The tongue was made blue for contrast and curling to represent almost a self soothing behavior. The black chains around the horn were meant to represent the chains I felt like I had grown around and the feeling of my own emotions being a trap.
Inspo: Guatemalan folktale masks, and Karolina Romanowska
Leave a comment