Painting
Magnificence & Chaos
Solo Project
Duration: 2019 - 2020
This body of work was created as the final project for my AP Drawing class.
Growing up in the age of social media, I sometimes feel powerless as I surf the untamed waters of blinking pixels, flashing images, and shifting interfaces, pulling me every which way beneath the undertow. After I realized how detrimental social media is to my mental well-being, I decided to create paintings to explore my conflicted relationship with media, documenting my inner struggles as a teenager trapped in the social media maelstrom. Inspired by pop art portraitist Andy Warhol, I seek to do for social media what he'd done for popular culture, revealing both social media's magnificence and its chaos.
01
Tears
17.9'' x 15.0''
acrylic on gesso covered wood board
2020
My monochromatic, glum portrait contrasts “glitching” tears streaming down my face, revealing my desperation and inner fatigue due to pressures from the content I consume.
02
Mask
13.4'' x 23.5''
acrylic on gesso covered wood board
2020
Social media's captivating, vibrant mask hides most of life's dreary realities, as captured my portrait's two-toned face.
03
Compression
21.3'' x 15.6''
gouache, acrylic, and marker on card paper
2019
My portrait's colorful & sectioned WPAP style reveals fragmented emotions due to constant influxes of opinions and information from social media.
04
Blinded
15.8'' x 15.8''
acrylic on gesso covered wood board
2019
"Pixels" surround a monochromatic portrait of numbness, confusion, and blindness due to a digital world full of constant clashing stimuli.
05
Eyepiece
10.2'' x 31.5''
acrylic on gesso covered wood board
2019
My black-and-white portrait merges with a vibrant gradient of pixels while my identity merges with the digital world around me. A green "pixel" that covers an eye forces me to see the world through lens shaped by media.
06
Void
15.8'' x 15.8''
acrylic on gesso covered wood board
2019
My personas on social media merge with my personal identity, sucking the color and vibrancy out of the real me and leaving me fragmented and drifting in a flamboyant void.
07
Modern Zombie
15.8'' x 15.8''
acrylic and ink on gesso covered wood board
2020
Social media steals my attention and captivates my senses, manipulating me to wander about as if I have a malfunctioning mind. I meander aimlessly in a colorful yet chaotic digital world, staring at a display screen, going about daily life, or, more likely, both at the same time.