Hybrid Body

       When I heard the assignment needed some type of hybrid element, my mind started thinking about how to incorporate flowers or some type of plant life. I often find myself drawn to art that involves some sort of nature aspect (John Seger Sergeant, O'Keefe, Van Gogh, Alan Lee, the Land Art Movement) and thought this would be a good opportunity to utilize this idea.
      I wanted to incorporate what the figure could possibly be and have it form some kind of relationship with its hybrid side. To have it somehow be interactive with that side of the body and be creating a meaning in some way. So I started to think about figures and what actions they take in all different types of art. One of the first prominent figures I thought about was Roy Lichtenstein's Crying Girl and immediately wanted to incorporate this style and action/emotion into my drawing. 

       For the collage aspect, I wanted to incorporate the nature/flower element alongside the requirement to display the interior of the figure. Flowers from different artists would be cut out from pictures and emerging from inside her body. I chose some flowers from Van Gogh because they have such an iconic impressionist style to them and I thought that would work well together with Lichtenstein's iconic style. One of the more difficult challenges in this drawing was figuring out how to position the woman's figure. Most of Lichtenstein's work is close up angles of facial expressions, so I needed to find other references. Figuring out how exactly to incorporate the collage was another challenge. Artist Marcelo Monreal uses flowers in his collages, exposing whats behind/under peoples faces. He is able to make the different flowers look like they are naturally flowing together rather than segmented parts, which is what I want to do. Astrid Torres also uses flowers and collage in her artwork. She plays with the idea of flowers coming out of her eyes rather than tears, possibly a different way to place my flowers. I came across a lot of different images displaying flowers in ribcages and ultimately went with this method. I liked one in particular by the artist Bedelgeuse. He also had one with a heart, from it sprouting different kinds of flowers, mainly tulips. This got me thinking about how I could incorporate the skeletal interior alongside the cardiovascular system. Artist Nunzio Paci would be the biggest help in this regard. He exposes the inside of different people while showing bones, arteries, muscles, and includes different plant life. The biggest influence from his was how I decided to cut the ribs away and show the heart. All that was left to find is anatomically correct references to put everything together. 

       Overall, I wanted to create an image of this woman crying into the flowers, resulting in them thriving and blooming. This is definitely more of a personal piece. The past few months have been difficult for me. I have been dealing with the sudden loss of a close family member. My grandfather played a large role in my life and helped shape me into the person that I am today. During this time I found that expressing my grief through crying with loved ones has been the most comforting way to deal with the loss. Being able to have someone relate to me and understand how I felt because they were also going through the same thing was such a massive source of comfort and support. I cant say that I'm over the death of my grandfather but making this helped me realize I'll be ok and I'll grow as a person because of this. I'm fortunate enough to say that, of my first 20 years of life, this is the first major death that's impacted me. I know that many others have had to face the death of loved ones sooner than me. While I think we can all agree that there is pain and hurt in the beginning, being able to express those emotions will allow us to blossom into stronger people.