For my Hybrid Body project, I chose to draw a girls face with flowers growing out of her. I chose flowers directly coming out of her because they physically symbolize growth within a person. Throughout my life I’ve struggled through a lot of things, but it made me grow up in so many different ways and I’m so thankful for that. Due to my severe anxiety, I was in a really dark head space for a large portion of my life that I didn't think I could ever get out of, but through work and actively trying to change, I was able to get better. I fought to turn my thoughts and actions into a positive outlook; I was able to turn this darkness into beauty (ie flowers). Through it all I’ve learned that even through the darkest of times you just have to keep going and fighting and you’ll learn a lot from it in the end. Although it’s been really hard, I cherish that I now how to handle things and how to deal with different situations in a mature manner. I still have a lot of growing up to do, but I’m still proud of myself for where I am today.
As for the physical execution, I knew I wanted to incorporate nature right away, but it took some time for me to develop my final idea to execute. I created the girl's face using charcoal and created the flowers out of oil pastels. I used charcoal for the girl to represent the ‘bad’ in my life, and I made the flowers colorful to represent the good and the beautiful parts of life. I also thought the contrast between the vibrant colors against the charcoal looked nice and it draws the eyes attention. As for the background, I wasn't exactly sure what collage items I wanted to incorporate right away. It wasn't until I was looking for a certain book at my house when I stumbled upon a ‘how to draw’ book. This book centered around teaching how to draw and paint ‘the correct way’. It was so bizarre! It was explaining how to hold a pencil ‘the right way’, and how to create a piece of work ‘in the right way’. A passage from this book wrote “Art lessons should only be given to students who show talent and will pursue art in the feature”; as if there's a law that says only true artists are allowed to create art. Another passage wrote “People who can only draw abstractly aren't real artist” which completely demolishes and spits in the face of abstract artists. Another paragraph wrote “Real artist draw from their imaginations and don't need to copy things”, so apparently if you ever use an image as a reference point you're ‘not a true artist’. Anyways my point being is that this book angered me SO much because of its disrespect to art in general. My first instinct was to rip it up, so that's what I did. I shredded the pages and decided to use it as my works background. I then did the exact opposite of everything the book told me to do. I looked at pictures for reference points and I made my art abstract with this unrealistic ideal of having flowers growing out of a human body. I really liked the yellowish tone of the drawing paper behind the girl as I was drawing so I decided to shred parts of a book with a similar yellowish tone to put around her head.
I used a bunch of different artists and pieces for inspiration before even putting charcoal in my hand. The first artist that caught my attention was Brandy Kraft. Her flower paintings are stunningly peaceful in front of their dark black backgrounds. Kraft states her flower hybrid series represents human individuality along with human growth and death. Her works to me represented this sense of human metamorphosis through life. The second artist I found inspiration from was Nunzio Paci who created plant human hybrid oil paintings to demonstrate the connection between man and nature. His paintings consisted of trees growing out of a subjects face, neck, or chest. The cross between the pencil draw subjects with the dark oil painted trees are stunning and captivating. Travis Bedel, a San Francisco based collage artist created a series of anatomical collages that piece flowers and plants into organs and shapes of the body. Like Pacis, his work represents the relationship between humanity and nature. I thought his work was a unique spin on hybrid collages. The next two artists, Gesine Marwedel and Johannes Stoetter, are both performance artists who use their bodies to create animal optical illusions. They both painted their bodies a type of animal and positioned themselves to look most like that animal. I thought these were such a fun play on painting.
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