THIS thing ^ says hewwo. UNIRONICALLY.

Mark Making a Powerful Weapon

Ink on Paper and Mark Making

Here is another day from my art residency at Ro2 Art gallery in Dallas, TX. I continue to work on medium-scale paintings in ink on paper and, lately, wooden panels with paper glued to the surface. The entire process is going in an exciting direction; therefore, I look forward to seeing which direction it will go.

Mark Making is Powerful

I spoke with a gallery person the other day about my latest paintings, which are full of vigorous brush strokes. Mark making is powerful. The physical actions I'm trying to convey through my paintings are meant to trigger memories and associations of other times or current events when they were meaningful, like a slip of the tongue, an awkward movement in a dance class, or an unexpected outburst.

Artist in Residence, Ro2 Art Gallery, Dallas, TX To represent that on the surface of the painting, I decided to use a different tool, other than the brush, that gives me more freedom and movement with my hand. Therefore this perfect tool is a mop that allows me to soak enough ink to make desired mark splash on the surface. But not only that, it will enable me to move on the surface in a controllable way. I also use a sponge to blend the ink or cloth to soak the excess ink from the paper.

Mop as a Mark Making Tool

Using ink o paper is a very fast process. Before connecting the mop with the surface, I premeditate some movement and decisions on mop strokes. The tool I use, a mop, allows me to convey the physical strength of the arm and hand movement to the surface. I have a short clip that presents that movement and where you can see and read the intention with which it was performed.

Artist in Residence, Ro2 Art Gallery, Dallas, TX When I apply the first layers to the surface of the paper or wood panel, it is more of a performance than painting at first. I perform my ability to express emotions or lack of feeling on the surface limited to its size. I paint in a way that will make the paper, wood panel, canvas, or any surface of my choice come alive.

Mop Performance

The actual painting process starts right after I finish the mop performance. The first layers reveal an abstract story that can go in any direction. That's the moment when the face shapes on the surface. That's the time when I embrace mark-making or destroy it. And I can feel it when I paint. It's an emotional sensation, so there is no definite answer to what it means to be alive and what it means to die. I want people to interpret it themselves. The last point I wanted people to focus on is the self-portrait at the bottom.

Artist in Residence, Ro2 Art Gallery, Dallas, TX

Follow for More

I decided to record the entire art residency journey with a daily mini-vlog so that I could look back in a couple of years and laugh about it or be happy that I didn't skip a day at the studio. If you are interested in watching it, here is the link. https://youtu.be/PZKpnRmE6EA

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headcanon the joestars on how they would react to an artist s/o like always painting, drawing and giving them like a painting of them they worked on?? thank u 💕

|| I don’t do part 5 or further requests yet, and I’m taking Joestars as in the Jojo’s, but I think I know Giorno somewhat enough to throw him in ! Also, cuuute request.

Part 1-5 Jojo’s | Artist S/O Headcanons 

Jonathan Joestar

- As one would expect, he is incredibly supportive of your talent! All of your family/couple portraits are hung up in the hallways and even a few landscape ones too to keep things looking lively. His favourite above all favourites would go above the fire place however, which is probably a painting of the two of you that you had gifted him on your anniversary.

- He cherishes it more than most possessions he owns, and when he’s warming up by the crackling flames, he can’t help but smile at it. That’s your hard work and your effort up there, and any house guests will know it as soon as he shows it to them. 

- Honestly, he doesn’t want to request anything from you as he feels as though anything that you gift him that comes from your mind and heart alone is far more valuable to him. Besides, he wouldn’t really know what to ask for aside from another portrait of you to hang somewhere that wasn’t taken up.

- During the spring and summer seasons, you take the time to set up an easel, canvas and paint set in the garden to have some fresh air and gather new inspiration. Even if you haven’t even gotten far into the piece, Jonathan will eventually come out the house with two cups of tea and stand behind you, bending down to lightly kiss your temple as he’s afraid anything more passionate would interrupt your creative process or cause your finger to slip. He would then ask for you to take a break and sit with him at a table to enjoy the view together, so the two of you can talk about your future painting plans and how his studies in archeology are going. Mutual respect for each other’s interests is an essential ingredient in any relationship.

- “Oh, look at your hands! No matter, we’ll just have to wash them once we’re inside,” is something he says before you realise that a tea cup you were holding had been smudged with a variety of green’s and blue’s from your fingertips. You apologise profusely in which he shakes his head at with a chuckle. “It’s alright, my love. I think it makes them look far more unique now! No china set in the world could look like this.”

- Skip 100 years into the future and your paintings may be in a gallery with a small “to Jonathan” written in the corner.

Joseph Joestar

- Definition of “Paint me like one of your french girls.~”

- Definitely suggests a nude painting of him. Or you. Or the two of you together, whether it be a joke or he’s somewhat serious.

- He’s amazed by your talent! Including your patience. He probably wouldn’t be able to sit still for long enough to even paint an abstract tree, so he has nothing but respect for your artistry. 

-If you were to ever gift him a drawing, he’d be stunned. Does he even deserve to own one of your pieces? Was this a declaration of love? Because he’s accepting it with a hard kiss to your lips and a string of ‘thank you’’s and compliments.

- One day, you had a serious artist block and had no idea what to paint leaving you stumped and staring at a blank canvas in despair. The lack of spark in your eyes that you usually had when painting hurt Joseph, so as a foolish attempt to help, he grabbed a bottle of one of your haunts and squirted it all over his hand.

- You gasped in response, about to scold him on the price of the paints when he suddenly slapped it smack middle of the canvas. “Joseph! Those cost a lot!”

- “Yeah but it’s fun! C’mon try it! Get your creative juices flowing or whatever you art folk say!” Taking your hand, he squirted a different colour onto it which made you giggle cutely as the cold sensation. He then guided it next to his bright hand print, pressing your palm down.

- It looked adorable and gave you an idea.

- With a smile, and a promise from Joseph that he’d buy you more paint later, the two of began to spread more paints onto your hands and continued to cover the canvas mindlessly with your prints.

- By the end of it, the two of who are laughing and even smearing paint on each other’s faces, leading to some squeals and hilarious facial features. 

- Sure, it wasn’t want you had initially wanted to go for, but with a carefully painted on “Joseph and [F/N]” written underneath the first two handprints that were made, you knew that the sentimental value of the piece was far greater than anything else you could have made.

Jotaro Kujo

- He has no reason to be against your talent and doesn’t have enough words and facial expressions to his name to show how impressed he is with you.

- Though that slightly changes when you hand him your sketch book one day, a bashful look on your face as you fear for the worst reaction from him.

- Inside are a multitude of sketches and even fine lined pieces of him, some with and without Star Platinum if you can see him, all carefully and accurately drawn in your own style. You even remembered to add the pin on his hat and his earrings...

- Jotaro could only blush brightly and cough into his hand to compose himself. “It’s good... I like it.” An understatement really, because if you let him keep even a page, he’ll be sure to keep it safe somewhere but no where obvious so his mother or grandfather don’t tease him for it. 

- If you ask him to pose for anything, he’ll want to decline and might even do so the first few times, though with some begging he may do some poses in your home, with the assurance that no one will barge in. Only casual ones though, so he doesn’t have to strain or embarrass himself.

- Buying presents for you is considerably easy as there’s always some sort of pen or paint set he can get to add to your wide range of media, all of which you are grateful for and gush over even though you tell him that buying them is unnecessary.

- “Have you considered doing an art major?” If you say yes, he supports you completely but warns you of the stresses and the harsh reality of the art world when it came to work.

Josuke Higashikata

- Ooh, is he going to show you off.

- “Yo Rohan Sensei! Sure you can draw that manga of your’s but can you draw THIS?”

- He might get killed or have his destiny rewritten by a certain stand user, but he knows it’s worth it when it comes to you. Have you seen your own art? It’s incredible !

- Most likely, he finds out by seeing you doodle in class and his jaw completely drops that your maths work sheet was instead covered in drawings of amazing bodies and plant life. If you insist that they’re nothing and “they’re just sketches,” he will personally shake you senseless and talk your ear off telling you that they are amazing. 

- Gifting him any kind of artistic media makes him overjoyed. Josuke shoves it in Okuyasu’s face, much to the delinquent’s dismay, and hugs you to death for the gift. “Aw babe, you really didn’t have to!”

- If you’re ever stressing over the quality of your work, he reminds you that you are amazing at what you do and that everyone has their own style, so that comparing yourself to others just wasn’t fair on you. 

- He plays a personal game where each day he tries to guess how much pen or paint you have your hand by the end of the day. Usually on weekends, it’s a lot more.

Giorno Giovanna 

- There’s a good chance that you met because of your work.

- You’re in a particularly beautiful Italian city, either sitting on a stool or ledge with a canvas or book in front of you, your hand working away at the landscape before you.

- While he was on a relaxing stroll, Giorno stopped behind you and peered over your shoulder, his breath taken away by how accurate your piece was to every exact detail.

- “Bellissimo...” He whispered, causing you to jolt a little and quickly turn around to look at him, a flushed or embarrassed look on your face. Oh, you’re cute.

- Right after he apologised for startling you and praises you for your work, which only flusters you more that such a handsome boy was complimenting you, you offered for him to sit next to you. Perhaps for you to even draw him?

- He doesn’t refuse.

- Once you’re dating, he takes you wherever you want whenever he can so you can draw the scenery, and shows you more gorgeous places to draw and even suggests what sort of people to draw. He also supports you doing something out of your comfort zone, for example if you typically liked to only sketch, he’d suggest for you to paint or use chalk in another style to see if it improves your skill as a whole.

- When he’s a don, he asks for you to paint or draw him so that he can hang it somewhere in an expensive frame to make his work place appear more serious and clear that he was the boss.

- If you do so, he thanks you a hundred times and buys you anything you want and as much as you want. Giorno also makes sure to repay you physically with a night out and kisses with a goodnight cuddle. 

- He might keep a small sketch of the two of you in his inside jacket pocket or draw so that every time he took it out during work, he’d be reminded of you and how you met, which motivated him to get the job done quick so he could go home to see you.

Hi Nin! I know this might be weird of me to ask because you are an artist yourself, but I am rather new here and was wondering if you have any other artists you'd recommend? If not that is ok!

Hi there, not weird at all! I LOVE supporting fellow artists, I find their wonderful talent and dedication incredibly inspiring, seeing their beautiful works on my feed constantly reminds me to take a step back from my exhaustion and to simply remember why I love to draw to begin with: because it’s fun.

I’m usually really picky about artists I follow and their style, but when I find the ones that I enjoy, I go ALL OUT with my support. So without further ado, the following artists listed are those I am not only in love with, but those who I genuinely look up to. 

So make sure you stop by their page to show them some love and appreciation for their hard work (because hard work extends beyond the individual pieces they’ve made, it’s also for the countless hours they’ve spent on practicing and perfecting their craft, constantly challenging themselves to learn new techniques). 💛

👇🏼👇🏼 Nin’s Artist Recommendation👇🏼👇🏼

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@aku-jumbi - HQ!!, Various, You all had seen me share a BUNCH of their works on my blog, but it’s just because their art is so SOOOOOOOOO good. Your style leans toward photorealism, while still maintaining its painting-like quality, so if you had ever wondered how your favorite characters may look like irl, they’ve got you!!! Watching your speed painting is so fascinating, idk how you do it, but you’re always killing it every time (Like our process is so different, so it was really interesting to see how you approach your works you know?). This piece of Kei Tsukishima and Oikawa Tooru are two of my favorite works you’ve done!

@achieve-the-sun - HQ!!, Various, Let me start off by saying that I love Morghy’s art so much, that they are the first and only person I had ever commissioned from so far. They drew Keishin and I sooo adorably, it brings me so much joy to look at it on the daily. Your style reminds me of freshly baked cookies, or the warmth of bakeries, I can’t help but feel a sense of coziness whenever I look at your adorable artworks. This piece you did of Kageyama and Hinata was what had drawn me to you. Everything from your color choices, fluid gestures, and expressions are such a delight to look at!

@chaotickatts - HQ!! I am so in love with Katts, you all. I had never seen anyone draw like this, her style is really unique. I can go on forever about why I love your art, but one of the biggest things that drew me to your style is the way you draw bodies. I like the variation and realistic details you include, for instance, I absolutely adore the way you gave Sakusa more moles on his body, and the way you drew dad bod Osamu. Idk, I think there’s so many different types of body shapes and details out there, and it brings me joy to see you being so inclusive of them in your art.

@namusw - Hunter x Hunter. Was drawn to their Hunter x Hunter works and I don’t even watch/read that manga. Honestly, just check them out, I love everything about their works, they are also a killer at both traditional and digital styles. This piece of Hisoka, Illumi, and Chrollo was the one that made me fall in love.

@cranbearly - HQ!! I really adore the way they draw expressions and their coloring style (inspired me to attempt some flat coloring). This piece of Oikawa and Iwa made me follow them instantly. Expressions are so difficult to nail, and you’ve done such an amazing job conveying every emotion the characters are feeling, I’ve learned so much just from looking at your works, so thank you for blessing us with your craft.

@a-zebra-was-here - HQ!! Their art has a very carefree type of vibe and their coloring style brings me so much joy. I’ve really enjoyed your drawings of the Miyas’, this piece of the twin was what got me, and this other piece, the first image of young Miyas’ was so SO well done, I am in love with the way you colored that. 😻 

@erionmakuo - Various, dude....I want to cry, I don’t even know what to say, EVERY SINGLE PIECE of your artworks just BLOWS ME AWAY. The way you color your art is just so ethereal, the color schemes you had chosen, the way you mix the color of your lighting, textures, and everything in general, I can go on about this all day but just hop on to their blog and you will know exactly what I mean. I don’t have a particular piece that drew me in because I was blessed by all your works at once.

@uranarino - HQ!!, Your artworks bring me so much joy. If I have to describe your style like an experience in life, I would say it reminds me of how it’s like to fall in love with someone for the first time, if that makes sense. That sudden overwhelming feeling you get when you’re doing the most mundane things with someone you care about, only for time to stop as you realize how in love you are with them? Yea, your art captures that really well. These two pieces of Kuroo returning home with his groceries and of him taking a day nap with his cats was what had drawn me to you.

@queenoftheantz - HQ!!, Various, Their style is really unique, it kind of reminds me of an adventurous graphic novel or something you would see on Cartoon Network (idk, I thought of Chowder, but please, I really mean it as a compliment, I just really love the fun cartoon style you have.) They also do some animations! I really love this piece of Kyotani you did, the landscape and colors look SOO GOOD!!

@noodlemanjpg - HQ!!, Various, love LOVE your style and the way you draw expressions. I also really love how you color, your works “appear” effortless, but I know a lot of knowledge and precision is put into crafting it. This piece of Kuroo x Yaku being all cozy at the couch was what had drawn me to your blog, it makes me smile every time I look at it. Kuroo’s smitten expression is just...ahsdl;adjs I can’t help but smile with him.

@diabolism666 - HQ!!, c’mon, you can’t be in the HQ!! fandom without at least seeing one of their artworks. In fact, I had seen your art even before I’ve gotten into this show, and it was love at first sight, lemme tell ya. EVERY. SINGLE. THING. you had drawn are so good, it doesn’t even matter if it’s a more simplistic drawing or elaborate one, I am just always staring at it in awe. Thank you for being so incredibly active about it too, idk how, but you’ve produced so many amazing drawings and we’re just incredibly grateful for it. You draw some of best Tendou, Reon and Toshi out there. Your works have so much range, I really feel like you can draw ANYTHING hahaha.

@viria​ - Various, Viria *sobs* your works are so good. The way you draw faces and affection just gives me butterflies. I don’t even watch Fullmetal Alchemist, but this piece you did of Edward and Winry made me fall so deeply in love with your works. Your style has a certain softness to it, even when it is of an angry character, and I love it.

@nipuni​ - Various, another artist that I am incredibly nervous to tag because your works are just out of the world. You also seem so so nice and is always incredibly helpful whenever anyone sends you an ask. Just...I have the biggest crush on you and your works. EVERYTHING you had drawn is so stunning, and I mean it. The details, pose, composition, and coloring, it is just so perfect, I could pull up particular artworks, but I was really blessed by it all at once. If you are into fantasy-esque realistic looking portraits, check her out, she exudes so much knowledge and talent.

@hinamihere - HQ!!, Your artworks are soo stinkin adorable. Your color choices, expressions and the way you draw hair is just so cute, your art always bring the biggest smile to my face. This piece you did of Akaashi and Bokuto was what drew me to you, when I saw it, I “awhhh”ed so loudly, my hubby had to ask me what’s up, and when I showed it to him, he had the same reaction, even if he’d never seen Haikyuu!!

@oxxuri - BNHA, so SO good, the way you color, light, and draw is so beautiful. Every single detail, down to every lashes and strands of hair is so beautiful. You draw some of the most attractive faces I had ever seen, these drawings of Aizawa and Midoriya brings me so SOOOO much joy, and I don’t even know anything about BNHA.

@amezure - HQ!!, their comic strips always make my day, I was giving their blog a peep so I can pull up specific examples and my statement is instantly confirmed when I stumbled across their newest comic art of Kuroo and Bokuto and started laughing HAHA. 😂 Your self study sheets are incredibly informative and I find myself referencing them often, it’s so nice to see my favorite artists continue to polish their craft through endless amounts of studying, practice, and analysis. It serves as a constant reminder for myself to do the same. I love the way you draw people (check out this piece of Bokuto x Akaashi), but I ESPECIALLY love the way you draw animals. (Specifically anything that has to do with lil owl Bo and Akaashi 🥺)

@obobro - Avatar the Last Airbender, HQ!!, I am absolutely in love with the way you color and draw portraits. Your drawing and detailing has so much range; you have a series of hand drawings, and that alone already displays so SO much range. I was really drawn in by this drawing of Tsukki, Zuka + Azula, and of Sokka + Katara, you can really tell they were related and I love it so much. Your art has so much life to it, it’s truly fascinating. 

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I have a couple more artists to recommend, so if you’d like a part 2 to this, please lmk.

But yes, I genuinely stand by my recommendations, these guys are so SO good at what they do and I am currently sweating because the thought of tagging all my artist crushes in one post is actually kinda scary lol.

Hope this helps! ✌️ 

How do you draw so well/are so confident in your art? (I assume you know who this is, but idgaf anymore lmfao)

LOL i do have an idea, although i’m friends with many fellow artists, but if this is any indication of a certain SOMEONE being super hard on themselves in all respects, then yeah i do. i will beat you lovingly with a soft nerf bat if you don’t start being kinder to yourself.

also!  the “confidence” you perceive in my art (HAR) is actually just me being committed to enjoying the process of creation.  i chose a different (though closely related) profession to studio art (although i do have a BFA in painting, but got my MA and PhD in something else), so that i could continue to love making things that interest me and have some deep emotional connection to me.  among those things, characters i love and identify with, either expressing their pain or being happy in the aftermath.  

 i know it sounds eye-rollingly cliched, but honest to God, if you forget you’re making something for an audience other than you, and just GO, just START, and also don’t worry about getting it messy and having to edit it later, and make a shit ton of stuff that you end up pitching, and just amass a giant mountain of stuff through practice, you will get there, and it won’t feel like torture (at least not all the time).  there will still be days you hate everything you make and toss it. honor the existence of those days, but then try again after they pass. 

i find that a good way to get over the “it will suck and people will hate it” jitters is to find music that filters out your thoughts but also doesn’t distract you from making the image.  devote a couple hours sometime to building some spotify playlists for drawing  various subjects. i kid you not, it’s a godsend. i cannot make anything in total silence. i freeze up completely, and i bet you do too.   what works for me is stuff with a driving beat and either repetitive lyrics or lyrics in another language. 

i think you’re a studio major, right? that means you also have studio mates you can take breaks with and bounce stuff off of. i also have some “fool yourself into getting to work” tricks for executive dysfunction that i can share with you if you wanna talk about this more in private. just lmk! xoxo. 

i also have more specific advice re specific subjects, like portraits, anatomy, landscapes, etc, like doing tons and tons of gesture sketches from live models or good reference photos, but we can table that for later too. 

i’m gonna also tag @valc0 and @halorvic who are both exceptionally talented visual artists and lovely welcoming people who may have more to add to this. oh and also @deannamb (hi dean, you know me as illusivexemissary, the spn gabe artist from the fanzine we were both in). 

...okay and also because they went to heckin’ SCAD (which is a big deal) @mostincrediblechange and @studioscallywag, weigh in also. 

SKETCHY BEHAVIORS WITH KIM SIELBECK

With a background in fashion, textile, illustration and printmaking, Honolulu based artist and designer Kim Sielbeck creates colorful, bold, and fun paintings and patterns inspired by lush landscapes in Hawaii. From murals to digital canvases, Kim recently created some our favorite customs as a Vans Custom Culture ambassador, using her signature color palette and designs! Find out more about Kim, what inspires her, and what she has coming up for the rest of the year.  Take the leap! 

Photography courtesy of the artist. 

Could you introduce yourself to everybody?  Hello! My name is Kim Sielbeck. I'm an illustrator living in Honolulu, Hawaii and have been here for about two years. Before that, I was in New York City for almost twelve years. I went to school at the School of Visual Arts. I grew up in a Coast Guard family and lived in Hawai'i as a child- it's much different being here as a grown up! Fun tidbits: I am a dog person, I was born in Alaska, I once broke my toe in mid-air taking a jumping photo.

How would you describe the art you create? How would you describe your particular technique? My work is colorful, bold, and fun. Mixing colors and choosing them before I start on a piece is something I love.  I limit myself to flat colors–this evolved from focusing on printmaking in school and working as a textile designer for several years. Pattern is important in my work, which also carried over from the textile world.

What are your favorite things to paint? What are your favorite things to paint on? I'm very inspired by the verdant, lush landscape in Hawai'i- the plants here are unlike any other in the world. I also love painting people relaxing and having fun. A lot of what I paint is a reaction to current events today. I paint the world I want to live in. As far as surfaces- murals are my current favorite! Painting on a giant wall, getting covered in paint, and working in a public space beats working in my usual set-up, which is an iPad or computer.

What’s a typical day in the studio for you like? And what are you currently working on in the studio? Every day is different. It usually involves a couple hours of combing through emails, finding the right balance of podcasts and music (with some dance breaks), and zoning out while I'm drawing. Currently I'm working on some new personal pieces- I just painted a portrait of my friends Sarah and Danny and their puppy. I'm also working on a few editorial pieces for some magazines!

My studio is very unique- it's located in the Old Blaisdell Hotel, which was one of the first hotels built in Honolulu. There are lots of other creatives in the building, and it's nice to take breaks and talk story with them during the day. We all support each other and it's a great community.

When you're working developing a new painting or piece, how does it begin - take us from sketchbook, to color choices, to finished painting?   A new painting starts as a tiny thumbnail to get the composition right. Then I'll start sketching right on the surface (normally wood panel) with a light underpainting. Picking color is something I do very early on- sometimes it informs the composition and the subject matter. I try to limit my palette to 5 or 6 colors per piece. Sometimes, I'll be 3/4 done with a piece and have another color idea- so I'll have to go back in and repaint entire sections of the painting. It's all trial and error, and you can always repaint something.

We love the colors and compositions of your works and designs. Can you tell us how you arrived at your color palette and how composition comes into play when you’re creating a piece? Years of working in the fashion and textile industry has given me a keen sense of color and color combinations. So much of my job as a textile artist was using colors that were popular for each season- we always had trend forecasting books laying around, and would often color or recolor a piece until it was right. We also limited our palettes to what commercial printers could print- usually no more than 8-15 colors per design. Additionally, color palettes were always the first thing we came up with when starting a design. I still have that approach today and often pick my colors before anything else is completely set in stone.

What tools will someone always find you using at your studio? I've got plenty of tubes of acrylic gouache laying around, lots of different brushes, and lately a lot of leftover house paint from murals. My go-to tools for commercial work include my iPad, desktop, and Wacom tablet. I'm able to leap from painting to digital work- most people can't tell a difference between the two!

How do you unplug yourself so to speak? What do you do to center or re-focus yourself if you find yourself stressed out about deadlines, art shows, and the sort? One of the reasons I moved to Hawai'i was to be able to unplug more. Prioritizing things like going outside and being in nature are great ways to step back and put things in perspective. I also make sure to keep a planner so deadlines don't creep up on me, and hit the gym to work out any lingering stress.

You recently worked as one of our Vans Custom ambassadors! We absolutely love the Vans you created for it. Can you tell us a little bit about the process, your concept, and the response you got? Thank you! I loved painting the Custom Vans... people always ask me where they can get a pair! My concept was to create one shoe with a tropical print and one with a desert print. They could be used to walk everywhere and anywhere across the globe. The colors I wanted to really pop- you would notice these shoes on someone's feet!

What do you enjoy about collaborations like this? If you could pick anyone in the world, who would you collaborate with? I've been a fan of Vans since I was a kid and tried to sneak into to the Warped Tour. I had big ambitions of skateboarding and surfing as a kid (I am finally learning how to surf!). The lifestyle, attitude, music, artistic improvisation, and boldness of skate/surf culture has always been magnetic, so working with Vans has been a dream job.

I love collaborating on all sorts of projects–I don't think I have one specific dream client. I love seeing my work adapted in new ways, like animation. I'd love to paint more murals, and also work on some big-impact projects that can reach more people and bring some color and joy into their lives.

What advice would you give someone who wants to follow in your footsteps? A career is not something that happens right away- you have to constantly work for it and adapt. I was hoping right out of school I would instantly become a world-famous illustrator... not the case. It took a few years to find my style and voice, and that's ok. More advice is to always pursue outside interests, and grow as a person. I was in a punk/pop band for several years in NYC (shout out Puppies!), learned how to sail, and traveled a lot. All these things, while not necessarily being art-related, helped influence my work and life.

How did start becoming interested in art and design? When did you find yourself doing it as a career? Moving around so much as a kid, art was something that was a constant. I could express how I felt, what I was going through, and could make friends doing it. Early in high school, I realized I could maybe do it for a living. My parents sat me down and asked me to come up with a plan for college and beyond, so I had realistic expectations and saw the hard work it would take. A good work ethic, some luck, and many hours of practice helped me push through. When I graduated college in 2009, there weren't many jobs. I lucked out and got a full-time job at the textile studio, while freelancing on the side. Eventually, 8 years later, the freelancing became stable enough to do illustration full-time.

When you’re not busy creating art, how do you unwind and chill out? When I'm not in the studio I'm trying to explore new places, go on hikes, go to different beaches, or learn how to surf. At the studio, my brain is on New York speed, but walking outside I switch back to Island Time immediately.

If you weren’t an artist, what do you think you’d be doing instead?   I'd be a guitarist and lead singer, traveling the world in my amazing punk rock girl group.

So we gotta ask what are your FAVORITE Vans? I have some surf-green high tops I've worn for YEARS. I got them in Pasadena one night at an art opening when my sandals snapped in half. The Vans store was miraculously still open, and I ran in and grabbed them in the five minutes I had to spare. They saved my outfit and my night, and they've since traveled to London, Italy, Hawai'i, Japan, and beyond.

What’s coming up next for you? I'm going to Europe in September, for some work and some fun. I'm looking forward to a few bigger projects I can't talk about yet. I'm also working on some local Hawai'i projects, including working with the Humane Society. A beach towel collaboration with Surfer Towel's Christie Shinn (who you just interviewed!) just came out, too.

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The mysterious grey blob returns with yet another prompt. Should you choose to accept this challenge, it must be completed AFTER A GOOD NIGHT'S REST. Ahem. Five words: Narcissa teaches Hermione about art. Go nuts-- provided you have slept.

Hello blob. (Tagging your creator since tumblr is not the best at letting people know their ask has been answered: @naralanis) I truly hope you like this approach xD

Also: A03 version

-The description of the National gallery is amix of what I remember from the time I visited London and the few pictures andvids I’ve been able to find. Probably not perfect and one part of my fic writerpersona is crying at but I implore clemency on that.

Also, insert here the usual disclaimer of I’mstill learning to navigate through these characters so apologies for anyOOCness.

PS: Slight mention to another one shot I wrote titled“Halt”. Which, as a jibe to our tumblr situation of not being able to writeyou-know-what I will merely describe it as lemon.

On with the story, shall we?

The museumwas about to close, the echoes of quiet steps from the few people still walkingthrough the maze of mixed big chambers and quiet corners a barely-there soundthat Hermione didn’t truly pay attention at as she walked briskly to one of thesmaller rooms; the lavender hue in where the walls were painted framing thepaintings she passed by a blurr, the golden frames that supported each portraita glimmer as she craned her neck; trying to find the blonde witch she had regrettablyleft behind a few minutes ago.

She foundher staring at one small portrait, back facing her and hands grasping the longsleeves of the blouse she wore; perhaps just slightly closer to the wizardingworld’s fashion than the muggle one but simple enough to not truly stand out inthe middle of the Gallery. Smiling despise the slight soreness on her calvesafter wandering for so long inside the museum, the brunette witch approachedthe older woman, tilting her head just enough so she could get a glimpse ofNarcissa’s profile; on the easy, yet small and soft, smile that curved herlips. Lips the brunette looked at for what felt the hundredth time ever sincethe woman had apparated inside her home a few hours ago; the shade of faded byobvious red the only thing she could truly focus on.

UntilNarcissa rose the blonde brow she was able to see from her position and turnedtowards her, soft smile turning into an almost teasing one.

“Boredalready?” The question held the same mirth-laced tone her expression conveyed,and Hermione found herself blushing just slightly, the heat on her cheeksrising and then fading as she swallowed, shrugging noncommittally as sheapproached the older witch with less brusque steps.

“I’m notbored.” She protested, but it was a feeble try and both of them knew. It wastruly no secret that art, any form of it, wasn’t exactly something she admired.Not in the same capacity Narcissa obviously did. “I just didn’t think you wouldfind muggle paintings so interesting.”

That, atleast, was partially true. When Narcissa had mentioned the idea of a date likethis Hermione had needed a few seconds to process. Not because she doubtedNarcissa’s capacity to enjoy muggle-made things (that much had been proved theday after her elevator had broken and she had carried her to every other placeshe had been to think off that the blonde witch would enjoy) but because shehad ingrained the notion that every portrait in the wizarding world moved quitedeeply. Watching immobile paintings didn’t seem like something Narcissa Blackwould enjoy.

She obviouslyneeded to re-check her facts because the blonde had been completely enamored byevery other painting they had come across, pointing details Hermione wasn’teven able to focus on before her own mind pushed her to move forwards.Something that, back when she had been a child, had elicited a sigh from herparents more times than she was able to remember as she memorized the shortlines beneath every other portrait before declaring she was already done.

And,despite the years passed, she seemed to still be holding on that habit as,after more than an hour of following Narcissa around she had found herselfwalking quicker between the rooms, paying attention to a few portraits here andthere, glancing at artists, dates and the sparse descriptions before moving tothe next one. Which had led her to finish way quicker than the woman she nowhad in front of her; almost immobile if it wasn’t because of the small knowingglint on her eyes, the trembling of her upper lip.

“But I do.”The older witch finally replied, raising her chin, pointing at the portrait shehad been staring at before Hermione had found her. At some place at their backthe brunette could hear the quiet whispers of a couple walking, probablytowards the same direction she had just come from: The Exit. “Painting… or anyother form of art really is just an interesting form of magic. Whether if thepaintings are imbued with hexes or not.” The addition to her first statement madeHermione blush again, forcing her eyes to focus past Narcissa and the blue andblack palette she had chosen for her clothes that day and gaze the painting onitself.

She wasable to recognize it, of course; the title coming to her just a second beforeher eyes -majorly because of simply muscle memory- fell to the small noteattached to it.

“TheArnolfini portrait.” Her mutter echoed between them, the quiet voices of thecouple lost in the maze once more as Narcissa nodded approvingly, the movementcausing Hermione to glance back at her; curious.

Of all theportraits the National Gallery had she would have never considered this one inparticular would catch the other witch’s attention. She could remember someone-her mother perhaps? - telling her about the complexity of the portrait, thedetails hidden to the naked eye, the use of lighting and colors. Still, thescene presented to the viewer wasn’t really all that majestic if someone wantedher opinion; two people, man and woman, looking directly to them, hands intertwined.

“Goodmemory.” Narcissa’s voice reached her from behind, the brunette realizing toolate that the blonde had approached her, standing closer than before, slightlyto her back. Her tone was but a whisper, the pitch soft and the words caressingher earlobe in the form of soft puffs of air. Despite her automatic try ofmasking her emotions on such a public place Hermione couldn’t help theautomatic pleasurable shiver that run down her spine; the praising getting thebest of her.

“Don’t dothat.” She replied, and she could hear the chuckle from the older woman beforea small nod close to her temple told her that Narcissa would stop the teasing;for now. Sighing, raising her shoulders a little with her eyes focusing oncemore in the portrait, Hermione read the date, the artist and the year theGallery had bought it, her voice sounding much more colder than intended.Wincing a little, not really knowing where to look, how to look, at the portraitthat had obviously entranced Narcissa, she glanced back to the older witch;completely at loss. “Van Eyck.” She repeated, the strong cluster of consonantssounding slightly off, as if her tongue wasn’t exactly rising in the right way,nor with enough force. “Didn’t he paint the Altarpiece? In Ghent?”

Chucklingbut with a warm glint on her blue eyes, Narcissa nodded. “He didn’t do italone.But yes.” She added, pressing her side against Hermione’s just enough forthe brunette to feel her warmth through their clothing. A little trick that itdidn’t matter how many times the blonde told her wasn’t produce of any hex orspell since she was convinced it must be an enchantment, a jinx, a curse even,of any kind. Taking a sharp gulp of air, feeling the scent of lilacs hangingaround the immediate proximity of Narcissa, Hermione tried to focus on theportrait alone, on the objects that cluttered the space behind the couple; themirror, the dog at their feet.

“I’m justnot very good at this.” She admitted, with a dejected sigh but her somberattitude was quickly fixed by the touch of Narcissa’s left hand on her hip,guiding her to the closest spot in front of the portrait without crossing thesmall line marked a few inches away from it.

“You arevery good at picking details.” The blonde said, still close enough for hervoice to caress Hermione’s neck as they both stood in front of the painting,the fact that they had minutes at best before they were asked to leave a fadingmemory in the younger witch’s mind.

“I preferthings that I can quantify.” The Gryffindor replied, and it was true of course;magical laws, arithmancy, transfiguration. All of those skills were easy forher to pick, to use, to understand. Two plus two would always equal four. Art,however, was different; more fleeting, less obvious, and while the brunettecould admit that the portrait felt life-like in a very different way magicportraits looked, she couldn’t truly understand the catch behind it, theimportance that the portrait had.

“Qui desponsari videbantur per fidem" The blonde’s voice sliced throughHermione’s musings and made her rise her brows, curious. Narcissa’s Latin was,obviously, flawless, but the brunette needed a few seconds to translate the phrase,Latin not being exactly something she used all that much if one didn’t countthe spells she used.

“Marryingaccording to the faith?” Her voice rose, not entirely sure if she had pickedthe subtleties of the language. The slight nod from Narcissa, one that made theblonde’s hair brush against her skin, made her hum, curious.

“There aretheories.” The blonde spoke, her hand still at Hermione’s waist, fingersdrawing circles as she spoke, lazy slow caresses that made the brunette biteher bottom lip. “That say that this portrait wasn’t only a portrait but amarrying contract.” Smile widening, Narcissa pointed at the portrait with herfree hand, her fingers at the level of the headdress of the painted woman. “However,a non-married woman -one that is about to be married- wouldn’t have had herhair like that; she would have it down.”

“Oh.”Despite her initial weariness, Hermione couldn’t help herself on feelinginterested by this sudden piece of information, her eyes focusing now on theposition of the hands, on the way the man looked directly at them while thewoman didn’t as much, on how everything was positioned, on the manner the otherhand of the woman had been painted. “So, they were already married when thishappened?”

A chuckleand Narcissa stepping away made her glance at her back, confused.

“That’s themystery.” The blonde replied, a wink on her azure eyes. “Shall we go? I had theimpression you were bored.”

Grumblinggood-naturedly but following the blonde nonetheless, Hermione casted one lastglance to the portrait they were leaving behind, a few pointed glares of someguards the walked past telling them they were cutting it close already.

“I guessart is not as boring as I thought.” She admitted once they finally reached themain hall, glancing at Narcissa as the blonde grazed the back of her hand,clasping it in a far too light touch, letting Hermione being the one whorotated the wrist, so they could intertwin their fingers together.

“I can always try to paint you. See if thatmakes it more interesting to you.” Narcissa’s salacious remark elicited yetanother blush in who knew how many minutes. One the brunette was quick to respondwith a light yet quick slap on the blonde’s forearm.

“I knew weshouldn’t have watched Titanic.”

Narcissarolled her eyes good-naturedly before grasping Hermione’s offending handbetween her own, a quick kiss on the brunette’s knuckles buying her time asthey, finally, walked outside the Gallery, the quickly losing light creatinglong shadows around them both as lamps blinked; pools of light deterring theblobs of black.

“I didn’tsay I planned on painting you naked.” The blonde’s chuckled, a little more airily.“But if that’s your wish…”

“Cissy!”

Animation Artists/ Bibliography

Artists

Mickalene Thomas

Mickalene Thomas is a multimedia artist that transforms her photography and collages into large scale paintings. She is known for her use of rhinestones, wood paneling, bright colors and 70s patterns and motifs that makeup the elaborate fabrication of her subjects and the constructed interiors in which her subjects are placed. Her representation of black women brings a nuanced perspective to the understanding of the black feminie experience, by placing her subjects in provocative positions that demand the viewer's attention. As someone interested in the combination of the digital and analog, I have enjoyed studying her image making process that begins with shooting her models in a studio, collaging the photographs, and finally making large scale mixed media paintings from the work. Collage-making and mixed media practice has inspired my animations, such as the ‘It Comes Unadorned’ gof series that incorporates my painting and analog drawings with found images and text.

Jessica Wheeler (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v31TAQSUDYo )

Jessica Wheeler is a filmmaker based in Manchester and creates work with the intentions of finding new ways to look at the queer experience through the combination of collage and digital animation. I found her work Euphorbia, when looking for ways to animate collages. The piece uses cut collage and stop motion animation to create an internal exploration of sexuality. I am drawn to the way that she is able to make such a fluid, captivating scene that unravels before the viewer's eye. Her use of symbolic imagery as well is very powerful and something appreciate in artwork that has such an intimate an personal concept

Sonda Perry

Sondra Perry is an interdisciplinary artist who works with video and computer based media. The themes within her work include blackness, African American heritage, the representation of black people centering on the way blackness influences technology and image making. She is also very big on net neutrality and making sure there is equal access to the internet and especially her work. She implements this care by using open software to edit her work and makes her projects available online for free. The use of technology for her installations creates an interesting between human nature and the digital world. Often using her own personal experiences with race and melding with digital work such as 3d renderings, Perry is able to express racial inequalities through a medium that is often withheld and inaccessible from Black people. Her piece Black Girl As A Landscape is a single-channel video, where in a camera pans slowly across the silhouetted body of a horizontally framed figure as she approaches or distances herself from the lens. As the camera zooms in we see the details of her fabric and and the eyes begin the piece through as the whites of the eyes contrast against the dark silhouette.

I am inspired by the experimentalism in film, the use of technology based methods to discuss the black experience and chronicle it from a woman's perspective.

Carrie Mae Weems

Carrie Mae Weems legacy as a contemporary artist working with photography, installation video, and print work. I have drawn inspiration from her Kitchen Table Series, a series that deeply resonates with me. Weems' series of self portraits sitting at her kitchen table while different life scenarios take place around her, featuring family members, lovers, friends and the most poignant ones only featuring herself, explores the representation black relationships and self, that I am working towards developing my work themes.

Kehinde Wiley

Kehide Wiley is an American portrait artist known for his naturalistic paintings of Africam Americans painted in the style of Old Master portraits. I have examined his work in my Fabrication as Race class and focused on how his representation of black people in a notable european art style draws to the forefront examinations of black representation and self perception. Similar to the way that Mickalene Thomas paints her subjects in positions of reclined nude women popular in european history. I have seen a few of his paintings in real life including Philip the Fair, 2006 in The Mint Museum in Charlotte, North Carolina and his 2018 portrait of President Obama in the National Portrait Gallery. His use of bold colors and patterned backgrounds draws the viewer's attention and is a way that he is able to extend the subject's identity through a decorative design.

Articles

Mickalene Thomas: Afro-Kitsch and the Queering of Blackness I have been studying multimedia artist Mickalene Thomas’s large collage acrylic paintings and her representation of assured black women from a feminist lense. This essay written by visual culture theorist, Derek Conrad Murray deconstructs the ways that Thomas’s identity as queer black woman, informs the ways that she portrays her female subjects and complicates the understanding of the black experience as it is perceived through the post-black art movement. The essay positions Thomas’s work within the greater post-black contemporary art movement, a movement that “articulates the frustrations of young African American artists (the post–civil rights generation) around notions of identity and belonging they perceive to be stifling, reductive, and exclusionary” (Murray). The essay analyzes a few of Thomas’s pieces and evaluates its effectiveness in reimagining black female subjectivity.

The Vasulka Effect ( https://sagafilm.is/film/the-vasulka-effect/ )

Watching the Vasulka Effect, I was intrigued by the couple's approach to video making and their role in creating a movement for new media art in the 1970s. As an individual interested in the music and art culture of the 70s, I was entertained by the name dropping of the artists that the Vasulka’s worked with. From Miles Davis, the Rolling Stones, and Jimi Hendrix, I admired the documentary work that went with bringing a new visual element to understanding music during this time. Their involvement with the drag community was also fascinating as I was able to see the connection made between experimental art making and underground communities. I think this also speaks to the use of the video medium as an effective tool to tell and showcase marginalized stories in an artistic manner. The way that Steina and Woody work with their video projects emphasizes the importance of collaboration. Their works are experiments, testing how to make sound information into a moving image. They attempt to make something that can not be seen visible, calling attention to how limited our senses are. One thing I loved about their process that Steina mentioned was how the two artists seemed to always “be playing around” and trying new alternatives to working with technology..

Petra Meyer and Katrin Kaschadt, “William Kentridge, Overvloed”

South African artist, William Kentridge's work features short animations made from large scale drawings using mainly back charcoal complimented by color pastel chalks. He is known for his technique that involves erasing, and changing parts of the drawn image and reworking the same frame. Leaving in the erasure marks visible through the process making the transformation of the image an integral part of the animation as a whole. “The animation comes into being therefore, by addition and subtraction, creation, and destruction” (Meyer, Kaschadt). Through this process, the markings and leftover tracings of the image become part of the animation and contribute to the artist's celebration of the imperfect relationship people have with change. His work was a rejection of the modernist aesthetics that placed importance on clean and “pure” work. His process and attention to the shadows reminds me of something that happens in printmaking called "ghost shadows”. These are images that are left behind on a plate or printing material and leave a light image behind on the new print. While there are ways to get rid of these and make sure they do not appear, some decide to keep them as part of their new print. I think the intentional use of these shadows and past images in work is very interesting and brings more texture and depth into the work when the marks left behind become as important as the blackest mark on the page. His work illustrates the relationship between South Africa's socio-political condition and history and the relationship between the individual and their landscape. .

Title: Pain of Parting Character: Jonathan Byers A/n: I loved jonathan so much during the first season, his character was really interesting so I decided to write somethin’ for him. I guess we could call this angst so there’s your warning if that’s not your jam.

•

“Do you have to go?” Jonathan asked as he sat cross-legged on your bed, chin in his hands as he watched you move clothes from your closet to a large suitcases that laid open at the foot of your mattress.

“You know I have to,” You told him as you met his gaze with a smile. “My family always insists that we go up to the lakehouse every odd summer. We haven’t been up there in over three years. So yes, I do.”

Jonathan got quiet, his hands were busy pulling at loose peices of string that had been caught on one of your blankets.

You looked up from your folding and noticed the sad expression on his face. You’d known him for a handful of years, and you knew he wasn’t very much of a people person. Apart from you, he didn’t have many close friends.

You set aside your clothes and sat down beside him. “You shouldn’t be sad, I’m only going to be gone until August,” You told him, reaching up and running your hands through his hair. “You can phone me whenever you’d like, and I’ll write to you. Two months and I’ll be right back

Jonathan moved his head to your shoulder, his eyes closing whenever you continued to play with his hair. “Really?”

You looked down at him. “Have I ever let you down before?”

•~•

Jonathan stopped over by your house the day you were supposed to leave, he wanted a chance to say goodbye.

You were already out in the drive away, helping your dad figure out a way to put all the suitcases into the trunk of the car.

“Here, I’m gonna get a few more things from the house. Maybe your mother will be better at this.” Your dad said, giving you a small tap on the nose before jogging inside.

You brushed off your hands on your overalls before you looked over and saw Jonathan awkwardly standing to the side with his hands in his pockets.

“Jonathan!” You called, waving him over. “Come to say bye?”

Jonathan nodded, shifting his weight back and forth as he tried to think of what to say. “I already said it, but I’m gonna miss you.”

You smiled at him. “Don’t be like that, when I come back you talk my ear off about all the stuff you did and we’ll still have all of August to hang out.”

Jonathan met your gaze and he reached out to pull you into a hug.

You laughed and returned his embrace, pulling away as you gave him a big kiss on the cheek. “I’ll see you soon.” You told him, taking a step back towards your car.

“Y-Yeah, I’ll see you.” He told you with a wave.

You waved back before turning on your heel.

You walked about five paces before Jonathan called you back.

You went to turn around but Jonathan was already there, and before you could even process anything he bent down and gave you a quick kiss.

“Bye.” Jonathan said once he pulled away and quickly made a run for it down the street while you watched him with wide eyes.

•~•

“Jonathan!” Joyce called as she entered the house, her hands busy shuffling through the mail she collected. “You have something from (Y/n)!”

Jonathan came quickly out of his room, only coming to a halt whenever he was in front of his mother. “Yes?”

Joyce looked up at her son and smiled, she handed him a letter and a cardboard box. “These are for you.”

Jonathan took them and a bright smile showed up on his face as he looked down at them. “Thanks.”

He hurried back into his room, setting the box aside on his nightstand before he tore apart the envelope.

You wrote about how nice the lakehouse was, how pretty the scenery was and about all the little adventures you and your family had so far on your trip.

Jonathan noticed you had drawn small doodles of rabbits and frogs all over the paper, they were even painted with the set of watercolors he had given you on your birthday.

He saved up for them for months, and it showed by how proud he was when he gave it to you and saw that you loved it.

“I sent along a box as well,” Jonathan read as he looked over and grabbed it, taking a minute to tear off the tape, he looked inside to find a small collection of things.

“The pencils are for Will, he had given me some of his drawings to keep and I thought he might like these. The earrings are for your mum, and be sure to tell her that I insist she accept them, she deserves it.

I’ve got you a gift as well, but I plan to give it to you in person.

Lots of love,”

•~•

Everyday after that, Jonathan had made it a habit to ask his mother if there was a letter from you.

“Anything from (Y/n)?”

“Did (Y/n) send a letter today?”

You would send at least one every week, but he still felt the need to ask just in case.

Until one day he noticed about two weeks had passed without word from you. Joyce would come home and gently let him know there was nothing, but reasoned the post was just being slow or you were busy with your family.

And at first Jonathan understood, he thought it was a reasonable explanation, so he stopped worrying about it.

Jonathan was driving home from picking a few things up from the grocery store for his mom, but he drove by your house and noticed that your family car was parked in the driveway.

You would have called to let him know you were coming home early, you probably would’ve gone to his house yourself if wasn’t late.

His curiosity was peaked, and he parked his car across the street before ringing your doorbell.

“Hello?” Your sister answered the door, and Jonathan was slightly taken back by her appearance.

Her eyes were puffy and red, she looked like she’d been crying for hours.

“Oh Jonathan, it’s you.” She said as she sniffed, wiping at her eyes with her shirt sleeve.

“Yeah uh, is (Y/n) here?” He asked, slightly alarmed by how distressed she looked.

If possible, her face got even more somber. “I guess it’s best to just tell you, but…” She broke off into a small series of sobs before continuing. “We were up at the lakehouse, and her and dad went out on the boat. No one knows what’s happened to them but they’ve been missing for a couple days.”

It took Jonathan a few moments to register what she was saying, and he was surprised by his lack of reaction.

“Of course, we don’t want to assume the worst, but no one can find them and it’s been days.” She said with a vacant laugh before shaking her head. “Wait here for a moment.”

Jonathan watched her disappear into the house, trying to understand why his mind was going blank at a time when he should feel sad or angry even.

But he didn’t.

“She mentioned that this was for you,” Your sister said once she returned. “She seemed pretty proud of it.” There was that sad laugh again as she held a wrapped package out to him.

“I’m so sorry,” Jonathan said, taking it from her.

Your sister nodded, her hand was now covering her mouth as tears piled up at the edges of her eyes. “She was very fond of you, talked about you a great deal.”

Jonathan looked up at her. “I’m sorry.”

He couldn’t think of anything else to say.

•~•

Jonathan drove home in silence.

He didn’t even turn the radio on.

When he stepped through his front door he was met with more silence, Joyce must have been working late again.

Jonathan closed his door whenever he went inside, his eyes remaining fixated on your present to him.

He didn’t want to open it.

You told him you wanted to give it to him in person.

You told him you were going to come back.

Why didn’t you come back?

Jonathan's hands were tearing away at the wrapping before he registered what he was doing. He then pulled out a leather sketchbook, he could vaguely remember times whenever you’d come over to his house and you’d be doodling around in it, refusing to show him the end results.

He undid the leather straps that kept it closed, and flipped through the first couple of pages.

He wasn’t surprised to find several pencil sketches of various animals, rabits and little mice in particular. Some of them were life-like while others were dressed in little jackets and hats, having tea parties by a river.

Jonathan moved to sit on the edge of his bed, despite the whirl of emotions going through his head, he found himself smiling.

To his surprise, the next pages were filled with portraits. Some were of him, others were of Will or even Joyce, they were all smiling in each of them.

He spent the next couple of minutes going through the rest of it, and he found himself growing disappointed whenever he was reaching the end.

On the very last page, there was a small handwritten note instead.

“I’ve been working on this one for awhile, but I thought you’d like to have it once it was finished.

I know you’re not a fan of pictures of yourself, but I hope you won’t mind a few sketches.

All my love xx (Y/n)”

You always had nice handwriting, it was always in cursive.

Suddenly, a wet spot appeared onto the page, Jonathan didn’t even realize it until it started smudging your signiture.

Another one showed up on the corner of the page, and he brought his hand up to realize tears were falling freely from his eyes.

A few tears slowly turned into sobs, then he was laying on the side of his bed, holding your sketchbook tightly against his chest while he cried.

Why didn’t you come back?

BRITT LLOYD: THE INTERVIEW.

1. What was the first job you were really happy with and how did you find it? My first job was becoming a full time photographic assistant to the photographer Nick Knight. I was incredibly happy with it, as I had just graduated from University and was given an amazing opportunity to start working. I was a huge fan of Nick and SHOWstudio, and so was very grateful to be working for someone who's work I admired. I got the job following a university trip to SHOWstudio with my own University. At the end of the studio visit I passed on some of my work to Nick's then assistants and expressed my interest in SHOWstudio, offering my help whenever they needed it. A few months later, they contacted me asking if I wanted to come and help. The jobs were basic, making tea and coffee, helping set up for interviews, but I was determined and worked hard, and gradually did more and more work for them. This continued for about 1 year and a half, with me spending my whole summer during 2nd and 3rd year working for them. Finally, when I graduated, they offered me a job full time. I don't think it was necessarily my photography work I first handed over to his assistants all that time ago that got me the job, but my determination, commitment and eagerness. 

2. When was the first time you really clicked with a stylist and why do you think that was? I actually still don't think I have which I find frustrating and hard. The relationship with other people on the team such as make up artists and stylists are so important. They bring different ideas and visions to what you have as the photographer and help enhance the final image. I hope and believe that one day I will click with a stylist...... I just need to keep working with people and making images.

3. Do you think film adds anything to a photoshoot? I think film adds something of the photographer feels it is useful and helps enhance their process. Again, I think it is down to how you shoot, if you shoot fast and find film slows you down, then don't let it hinder how you shoot. But if slowing you down helps you to look at things for a little longer and help compose your shoot, they maybe. I think it depends on the photographer and what aspects of photography they enjoy.

4. Do you think it’s best to learn one camera very well or experiment with others? I think you should experiment with others until you find one that suits your style of work. All photographers have a very different process, and what they shoot will requite a different process. For  example, if you are a sports photographer you will need something portable, mobile and quick. Whereas a still life or portrait photographer may lend themselves to a slower process which makes them look for longer. Try different cameras out until you find one which fits your process. It may end up being a couple of different ones. I  think it is always good to experiment now and then to shake up your process. You might really enjoy shooting with a large camera on a tripod, or always want to be moving and getting close to your model. It all depends on the photographer and how you shoot. 

5. Do you think it’s important to have an agent? If so why? Agents are good for finding you work. If you want to make a lot money, and that is your primary goal in photography an agent is helpful. If not, agents can sometimes not fully understand what YOU as the photographer wants to do, and just tries to book you on as many jobs as possible. If you become hugely successful, they are very useful in handling all your contracts and money and jobs ect. but when you start out, discover yourself and what you want to do. You don't need someone else to do that for you (I think)

6. What do you think all your shoots have in common? Good question! That they are very strong and confident in what they want to say. And they have some sort of emotion behind them.

7. Would you say you are successful within what you do, are there any other goals you are trying to achieve? Hhahahah - I would say no! But my level of success is very high. I am fortunate enough to live off the money I make from doing photography, so in that sense I feel I am successful and very lucky (I don't have to have a second job like working in a shop or a bar to pay my bills)For me , success is when I am happy with my work and when I think my work is good. At the moment I think 20% of my work is good. I  know I have A LOT to learn and I know I can do A LOT better. That excites me! Because I hope in 20 years time,  I can look at my work and think "wow- that is a really beautiful image". I want to make amazing work. right now I am not, but I like to think I have the potential to do so. My goals:- publish a book of my work .....BIG GOAL = Have a photograph of mine in a big art museum, so someone off the street who is going into an art gallery to see a Rembrant painting, will also see my photograph, and think it is quite beautiful!

The secret to sculptor Anna-Wili Highfield's success: break the mould

It was by the time fledgling designer (and seasoned hippophile) Bianca Spender saw it. She and Highfield had met when Spender bought a tiny painting from Highfield's graduating show at Sydney's National Art School, her first and only sale to that point. When Highfield told Spender she had moved on from painting and was making a horse from pipes, the designer just back from overseas and working for her mother, Carla Zampatti was incredulous. "I asked her how she'd done it and she said, 'I just bent them'," Spender says. "I asked how it was held together and she said, 'Copper wire and masking tape; I'm going to hang it from the ceiling'. I thought, 'You have to be kidding'." Then Spender saw it. "It was like one of those drawings where you can't lift your pen from the paper, turned magically into three dimensions. It was utterly transformative. I thought, 'I have to have that horse.' "There were about 20 seconds between seeing it and being able to get Anna-Wili's attention to ask, firstly, if it was for sale and, secondly, if anyone had bought it, and they were the longest 20 seconds of my life." Re-hung from the ceiling of Spender's Bronte home, the horse featured in a Sydney Morning Herald article on Spender, who subsequently commissioned Highfield to make other works, including a paper owl for the launch of her first store on Oxford Street in Sydney's east. Suspended mid-flight, pursuing a fleeing Spender dress, that owl nailed the eye, particularly at night, spot-lit and spooky. Images were shared. People came in to ask about the artist. What had been a trickle of commissions and interview requests turned into a tide. Highfield never made it back to Opera Australia to finish her apprenticeship. She swapped the owl for a Spender wedding dress when she and Cavanough married in 2009. Her life changed gear. Particularly after an interview request from a show called Man Shops Globe on the Sundance Channel in the US which visited her in her studio on the recommendation of then New York-based Australian stylist Sibella Court and a commission from luxury goods company Herms, specifically its Australian communications director Eric Matthews, a former editor of Belle magazine with an interest in art. Time was becoming a real issue. Highfield hired an artist's studio in a converted terrace, escaping there at every opportunity. Increasingly, she was barely getting through her emails. "I was making sculptures, not marketing myself, but I could just feel something happening and it was getting bigger and bigger," she says. "It was fabulous and it saved me, but I just couldn't keep up." By 2011, she had a waiting list of 200 people and up to three years, which is when she recruited her cousin Xanthe as her first assistant. "I remember I was holding Matilda and Xanthe was at my desk and she looked up and said: 'Wili, The New York Times wants to know why you're not answering their emails,' " she says. "I remember thinking, 'F, I've gone viral'. I was getting commissions from all around the world, interview requests from German and American art magazines and Russian Vogue. You could literally track it on a map. "The interest in me as a personality was hilarious. I was being asked my favourite Sydney restaurant. I remember thinking, 'This is so beyond my life', which is about going to the studio and the park." Glamour was to follow, though, and when it did, it found Highfield ready. The portrait that accompanied the subsequent New York Times article showed her young and beautiful "They photo-shopped me to a ghoulish extent," she grimaces with the just-finished, three-quarter-scale Herms horse behind her, busting through a wall. As she herself was about to. When Pegasus flew into Herms' Brisbane store, a local bus driver started pulling over between stops to give passengers a look. When it flew on to Melbourne, businesswoman and art collector Carol Schwartz not only spotted it in the Herms window, but travelled to Sydney to meet the artist. "It had this extraordinary strength and delicacy," remembers Schwartz. "I was so fascinated by it that I wanted to meet her. Her studio was in an old house back then and it was just so incongruous: this amazingly beautiful woman and this amazingly beautiful work in this funny little room." A subsequent commission, an unkindness of ravens for Herms' Sydney windows, caught the eye of prominent Australian artist Ken Unsworth, who contacted Highfield to buy a work. Her waiting list would peak at five years, before shrinking back to months as she started concentrating on fewer, bigger commissions, her prices increasing from the few thousand dollars she originally charged to upwards of $20,000 today for major works. I was getting commissions from all around the world ... You could track it on a map. The interest in me as a personality was hilarious. Anna-Wili Highfield "Her story is so inspiring in terms of just starting to do something and everyone being magnetically attracted to it," says Spender. That magnetism partly reflects her subject matter nature at the time it is most in peril along with the novelty of her medium, cotton rag paper, and her ability to conjure a creature through a bravura display of technical skill. It's also about what she then takes away: up to 70 per cent of the work, to "allow a doorway for the imagination". What Highfield's works communicate is not a likeness so much as a living moment; of apprehension, as a thing coheres from its parts, as artist and audience collude to create it. As she puts it: "I'm creating a vessel for a particular energy." Along the way, Highfield has crafted a very individual way of being an artist in Australia: working entirely on her own account, independent of traditional enablers such as public and private galleries, instead powered by word of mouth and social media. It says it all that her first commercial show in Australia will be at the Tim Olsen Gallery in Sydney in October, more than a decade into a successful career, and 18 months after Olsen showed her in New York. "I would have approached her sooner had I known," says Olsen, who sees echoes of everyone from the great American sculptor Alexander Calder to surrealists such as Salvador Dali and Man Ray in Highfield's work. Instead, her staple has been commissions from individuals who have found their way to her. It's a fresh angle on the new world's oldest story: a system of established gatekeepers recording or publishing companies, the public and private gallery system is circumvented by new technology (such as made-for-art Instagram, which emerged around the same time as Highfield), erasing old barriers to entry in the process. In Highfield's case, those new players have been luxury goods companies and their ever-increasing appetite for artist collaborations. Herms has played the kind of patronage-and-promotional role for her that public galleries have in more traditional careers. Highfield has made a major work for the house every year since Pegasus, 10 in total, including a series of horses for its Istanbul store last year and another in Herms leather, animated mechanically by Highfield's husband Simon (the two separated in 2014, but remain close, working in adjoining studios and sharing the children). She is now working on an 11th piece destined for Europe. There's nothing new about such collaborations, from Dali and couturier Elsa Schiaparelli in the 1930s to Louis Vuitton and Jeff Koons, Yayoi Kusama and Richard Prince since. The heydays of luxury goods and contemporary art have coincided often merged over the past two decades. Think Damien Hirst's $US100 million 2007 diamond skull, the memento mori of the pre-GFC boom. In the decade since, collaborations have exploded. Pure and applied creativity have grown ever-more symbiotic. When jeweller Tiffany & Co. opened its new flagship store in Sydney's King Street last month, including its first permanent high jewellery offering in Australia, it included a pair of new Highfield works. In two private suites on the upstairs bridal mezzanine, sprays of delicate fairy wrens explode from sconces of silvery bottle brush, circling the heads of ring-shopping couples.

Highfield wrens, part of a commissioned work for the private suites of the bridal mezzanine in Tiffanys new Sydney store.Credit:Robin Hearfield

Highfield wrens, part of a commissioned work for the private suites of the bridal mezzanine in Tiffanys new Sydney store.Credit:Robin Hearfield The choice of wrens typifies the cleverness of Highfield's work, expressing not only the artist but a client and relationship. Beyond being fabulously decorative, the birds are native part of the idea of commissioning local artists for the store was to give it a sense of place the males' brilliant hoods a near-as-damn approximation of Tiffany blue. "They just remind you of that wonderful line from the film: 'Nothing bad could ever happen at Tiffany's'," the jeweller's vice-president of visual merchandising, Richard Moore, said during a lightning visit to Sydney for the opening. Success usually comes at a price, and whether Highfield will be embraced by the mainstream contemporary art world or dismissed as a lifestyle, commercial or craft artist as so many female artists have been remains to be seen. Her New York show was only a moderate success, says Tim Olsen, though works have continued to sell since. "The transition from fashion and design to pure art is a lot easier these days," he adds, citing his recent Dinosaur Designs show, featuring work by his sister, Louise Olsen, and her partner, Stephen Ormandy, which sold out. "Anna's work totally transcends craft, design or fashion. Sometimes I don't know how she holds them together. And I think she realises she has to move beyond commissions to be taken seriously as an artist." According to Agatha Gothe-Snape a successful "serious" artist whose work is held by public galleries Highfield is already past that. "It's just such a relief that pure talent and work speak louder than any institutional approval," Gothe-Snape says. "I don't know any artists who have been able to raise two kids and live the life she does in Sydney from their art. It's just unheard of." Gothe-Snape recalls the time Highfield made a profile of her son out of pipe cleaners. "It isn't just that the likeness is profound; it is actually him. My boyfriend [artist Mitch Cairns, who won the Archibald Prize in 2017 with a portrait of Gothe-Snape] took one look at it and said, 'That's literally the best thing I have ever seen'. It's magic and she's always had it." Says Highfield of her works: "They have to feel alive really alive. It's like painting a portrait. One tiny, little mark and all of a sudden it looks like that person. It didn't a moment before and it may not a moment later. I'll just do something and all of a sudden it's alive and singing." If it isn't, she kills it. The day of the shoot for this article, she sends a text asking if an owl she has been working on is in any of the shots. "I just destroyed it," she says when asked why. "You can't let things out that aren't good." Highfield grew up in Palm Beach the real Summer Bay on Sydney's northern beaches, "right on the edge of a nature reserve", she says. "We'd climb up through the ferns from our back yard and play in the caves overlooking Pittwater." It was the 1980s and early '90s. The rich blew into town mainly on weekends and holidays, but the parents of her classmates at Barrenjoey High tended to be "builders, photographers, film-makers and artists makers". Like her own. Her mother, Katie Swift, was a caterer-turned-food stylist, as her own mother the early food personality and presenter Rosemary Penman, whom Highfield is said to most resemble had been. Her father, Allan Highfield, was a puppeteer with the legendary troupe the Tintookies and live-action puppet show Blinky Bill on ABC TV. "That animism of hers has something to do with the fact that her dad was a puppeteer," says Gothe-Snape. "It's in her hands as they touch things. It's how she connects with the world. She's such an elegant, glamorous person, but you look at her hands and they're real: a worker's." "Maybe," Highfield says, turning the idea over in her mind. "I pull the strings [as she stitches a work together] and something becomes alive. I was certainly very proud at school that my Dad was Charlie Goanna, Walter Wombat and Sybilla the Snake. He was deeply interested in Aboriginal culture. He'd go away for months at a time touring puppet shows around Australia and he'd often stay in Aboriginal communities."

Highfields Kangaroo, 2015.Credit:Jen Leahy That's how Highfield got her name. "When I was born, Dad was somewhere near Bega doing a show," Highfield says. "Apparently there were pelicans circling the phone box when he rang and found out I'd just been born, earlier than expected. So he found out the local Aboriginal name for pelican and came home saying he wanted to call me Wili. Mum wanted to call me Anna and they argued about it until my grandmother said, 'Just put a hyphen in the middle'." That pretty well summed up the relationship. Her father drank and had a "temper that made things frightening", Highfield says. When she was 11, she and her elder sister found out that the son of a family friend was actually their half-brother. Her parents divorced when she was 12. "There were so many fracture points, but I just remember this camping trip when we met Dad in Darwin, where he was on tour, and drove back to Sydney over six weeks. They just argued the whole way. "Dad was nature man, with a beard down to here. He called mum a yuppy we weren't allowed to have tents because tents were for yuppies and he always wanted us to only eat roadkill. I'd lock myself in the car at night and cry. I just remember watching mum washing her face in the billabong with Clarin's cleanser and thinking, 'They are so different'." Her name enshrines the dichotomy. In conversation for this article, family and friends tend to call her Wili, while the luxury and gallery set prefer Anna. For all her swan-like qualities, Highfield also has an endearingly daggy awkwardness. An honesty and lack of pretence what Tim Olsen refers to as her "uncertain certainty". "Growing up, I was the fat kid with Coke-bottle bifocals," she says. "I was dyslexic, but it was never diagnosed. The only thing I could do well was draw, so I drew all the time and that got me through 12 years of school. I wouldn't have had a shred of confidence without it." Loading It's tempting to see that dyslexia as an essential part of how she's navigated the world: at an angle, by feel, instinct. As a teenager, she didn't fit in. "Palm Beach looked idyllic but it was a monoculture and I wasn't interested in surfing. I didn't date anyone. I would stay in my room and paint. I was a romantic snob, reading Keats and Shelley." The other thing that having an artist for a father did do, Highfield says, was "make me a better business person". Her mother kept the family afloat, not only by working but also mortgaging and re-mortgaging the family home until she eventually lost it when Highfield was in her 20s. "Mum got us out the door and we wanted for nothing," Highfield says. "But when I finished school she said, 'Can't you do graphic design? There's more chance of a steady job', because she knew how hard it was. When I said, 'I'm not good at graphic design and I'm not interested in it', she said, 'Just promise me you'll try and make money where you can. Your father was always talking about the purity of his art.'" I think Anna realises she has to move beyond commissions to be taken seriously as an artist. Tim Olsen Highfield knew she had to find a way to make it work. "A lot of my anxiety early on, when I was having Matilda, was about how I was going to do that work and have children and make art which is why what happened was so wonderful. I started not asking a lot for my work, which I now think was actually quite clever. It was about honing my art, getting work out there." Successful second-generation creatives occur regularly in this story, from Highfield to Spender, Olsen and Gothe-Snape, the daughter of the artist Michael Snape. They're a generational creative cohort who grew up together. But they all seem to have learnt a thing or two about the business in the process. In Highfield's case, it helped that she enjoyed working on commission, which a lot of artists hate. "To me, art's an exchange. I like having somebody in mind and doing what they want. There's a reciprocity and structure and warmth. Artists making work for the museum is a 20th-century thing. And it meant I could work outside an art world I was afraid would reject me. It bought me time to figure out what my work was about by making it; I didn't have to go in with a pitch. And it was good for my confidence. People wanted me to do what I did for them. And they kept coming back."

Bianca Spender (at left) and Highfield with her horse sculpture in Spenders Paddington boutique.Credit:Tamara Dean Ten years after they first met, Carol Schwartz now has 14 Highfield works, including a flock of birds, a parliament of owls and a mob of kangaroos. The latter stand in the kitchen of her beach house on Victoria's Great Ocean Road. "There are hundreds of kangaroos on the property and it looks like three of them just wandered in," she says. "The expression she has given them is remarkable. They're so alive, they just blow people away. The fascinating thing about her work is that it's only paper and it's partial, so your imagination takes over and fills in the blanks." Spender has so many works including three horses at home, four in stores and boutiques, and one in her studio that her partner has declared a fatwa. "I'm not allowed any more," she says. These days, that first Highfield painting sits on her bedside table. Highfield's latest project is her largest yet, a house she and her mother bought in Sydney's inner west and are converting into a compound where all four generations will live. "Mum and my grandmother are having the main house and the kids and I are building a smaller house out the back, separated by a garden," Highfield says. "I like small spaces. They force you to be efficient. I only want to have my treasures. Nothing else." Twenty years after she left home, she has come full circle, particularly given the builder and renovator of the two houses will be her half-brother, Max Arent, another family "maker". "We're all very close these days," Highfield says. "And Dad is a beautiful grandfather. I guess everything works out in the end if you're open to change and tack with the wind. It's like art: it comes together in the making." To read more from Good Weekend magazine, visit our page at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and Brisbane Times. Most Viewed in Entertainment Loading https://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/art-and-design/the-secret-to-sculptor-anna-wili-highfield-s-success-break-the-mould-20190430-p51iiy.html?ref=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_source=rss_feed

My Best Day

So, I was really excited to do this project because I rarely ever take a whole day just for pleasure and fun. I’m the kind of person who always wants to fill my time with something productive or something that’s bettering me somehow. I had my best day on Easter break and to be honest, if this wasn’t a project for school I most definitely would have spent the day working at my two jobs, doing homework, and working out. I’m really happy that this became something intentional because I think spending time to just slow down and relax was very healthy for me (something I need to consciously do much more).

So, I started my day around 7 waking up to my beautiful cat next to me purring like heaven’s harp. Also, a lovely sunrise over the trees!

I always like to wake up with a few songs playing on my speaker because it gently wakes me up and helps me to feel alive again. I played Feels like Summer by Childish Gambino as I made my bed (cuz I’m conscientious) and got dressed. This song is BEAUTIFUL. Plz listen (if you wish). It was the dreamiest song to wake up to and the lyrics are really beautiful as well. One part of the song I felt really resonated with my theme of slowing down on this day:

Men who made machines that want what they decide 🎶 Parents tryna tell their children please slow down 🎶 Slow down 🎶

I looked up the lyrics on genius to discover a deeper meaning to them and when I clicked on these lines, this popped up:

Maybe I’m oppressed in the sense of adhering to the capitalistic notions of always being “productive” - A lot of things I do I really enjoy and do to better myself but I was happy to finally have unbothered time to engage in my imagination and child-like playfulness.

After getting dressed I went to get a haircut. This was one of the first things that popped into my mind a few weeks ago when I was thinking about what to do for my best day, but I was somewhat concerned because I felt that getting a haircut may be just an activity to achieve beauty, one of the three happiness myths Sonja warns us not to fall into. However, once I really thought about it i realized I didn’t want to get a haircut to achieve beauty (minus executing these split ends) but to just take care of my body and relax. Especially when in school, I’m always either doing homework or working and I have so little time to just take care of myself that I end up feeling like a salted slug (gross, in layman’s terms). Though getting a haircut is not technically a part of the happiness activity of taking care of your body, I’d like to think of it as one, because it gave me the same effect. Plus, everybody knows the head massage is the best part, duh. And once I was done my hair felt like it was crafted by silk worms.

Here’s my before and after pics:

There’s really no noticeable difference, I just thought the first picture was meme-worthy.

After my haircut, around 10:30 I went to get acupuncture. I had never gotten acupuncture before and I wanted to intentionally cultivate a new experience into my happiness day. It was quite the experience. I entered into a calm and quiet community acupuncture room and sat down on a big comfy recliner chair. I then closed my eyes and my acupuncturist starting inserting needles into my hands, feet, legs, ears and face. If I were to relate it to any of the happiness activities Sonja mentioned it would probably be a form of practicing spirituality and taking care of my body. Once all the needles were inserted I felt like I was being supercharged with energy, and felt it was the perfect time to start meditating. I cleared my mind and focused on my bodily sensations. At one point I felt a trail of oil on the top of my hand starting at the tip of my thumb to an intricate squiggle on my hand and then to the tip of my ring finger. In my head I was thinking “wow, how is this dude pouring this oil so intricately?!” I opened my eyes so I could express my amazement to him but no one was there. I realized that the sensation I was feeling was the energy moving through my hand, because acupuncture is used to rebalance and distribute energy. I was super bewildered by this because the physical sensation of oil on my hand felt so so real. After this happened I sat for another 30 minutes meditating until the acupuncturist came and pulled all the needles out of me. I slowly got up and thanked him and then left. This was such a memorable and interesting experience for me and it left me feeling incredibly energized the rest of the day.

After I left the acupuncture place I went home and made some tea. The next item on my happiness list was to have a dance party. Dancing is an absolute passion of mine, along with music, so I wanted to intentionally engage in something that would free my soul. I danced for 3 hours while my cat slept in the corner. I put on some fenty beauty body lava to be #extra and mainly freestyle danced to Melii and Solange. The time went by so seamlessly because I was just in my element, not thinking about anything else. I also pole danced which was the part the provided a nice bit of challenge with all the inversions and twirling (phew). I didn’t intentionally dance to create a flow state, I just wanted to do one of the things that made me happiest, but looking back at it I was definitely experiencing flow, even superflow. As Sonja puts it in her book, “superflow is when you are not only completely absorbed and unselfconscious but absolutely transcendent.” That was definitely my experience!

 I recorded this dance party for receipts but I’m just going to spare your eyes cause I don’t think a professor should have to see me bust moves. However I sent a video to my boyfriend and he sent me back a zoomed in screenshot of my cats face: 

I think he was just processing how lucky he is to witness such magic!

After my personal dance party I went to therapy, which just happened to fall on the same day as my best day, I mean why not delve into the depths of your own psyche for kicks? I actually talked about how I wanted to do EMDR therapy this summer to reprocess some traumas so that I can be less triggered by certain things and be a better yoga teacher. In my yoga teacher training the week before we had spent about 3 hours learning about trauma and how to be mindful of it when teaching and it kind of activated my own issues. I guess this could objectively sound terrible but I really like talking about deep topics and my therapist is really supportive, so honestly it was enriching to spend a part of my day delving into. 

After therapy I went straight to yoga with one of my favorite teachers, Jo-Jo. yoga is another passion of mine and is essentially my spiritual practice. On this day, Jo-Jo really decided to amp it up and it was such a hard class it was comical. I mean this was one of our poses..... 

I think everyone was internally crying but also appreciated being invigorated and challenged for the day. For me, it was partially a flow state but also a way of taking care of my body through engaging in physical activity that was strengthening and energizing. Once I got out of yoga I decided to meet up with my boyfriend to get something to eat. We went to whole foods because I was craving the veggie burger they have at their coffee & burger bar. I’m a vegetarian and usually don’t like meat substitutes but the texture and taste of this veggie burger is a lot like meat and is really good. After dancing and doing yoga I was really excited to eat:

It was delish! 

Once I finished eating I went to the Frist Art Museum to meet up with my best friend Sami and look at art together. He ended up getting there 15 minutes before they closed so I spent most of the time looking at the art alone, but I didn’t mind. On the first floor there were just an inordinate amount of aristocratic style painting of horses and dogs. They were well painted, but I honestly was cracking up at them. 

Here are some below:

Pup family reunion.

Birds looking down with contempt at us uncultured swine! 

or Four Birds With No Scone

I really don’t know.

Once I finished looking at all the paintings on first floor I went up to the second floor to see the photography exhibit of Dorthea Lange. This was the total opposite of my experience of the first floor paintings because the pictures were so deeply moving. Dorthea Lange photographed a lot of people in the Great Depression era and looking at the portraits of each of the people she photographed gave me a kind of out of body experience. To see people photographed so crisply almost 100 years ago gave me this sense of wonder of all the people who have been alive and experienced their own worlds. I really felt the the photos she took of these people immortalized them, even if she didn’t have their name or a story to go along with them. 

Here are some of her photos:

Since Sami ended up coming too late in time to really look at art with me, we ended up just sitting in my car talking and joking for a couple of hours. This was arguably the best part of my whole day. He’s one of my two closest friends and whenever we’re together we always have a deep heart-warming talk followed by utter wackiness. He told me about how he was having this creative pen pal romance with this girl we went to high school with who now lives in New York. They’ve only been talking through email and they’ll send each other a lot of messages in Spanish to decode as well as collages, videos and other art. It was really inspiring for me to see that kind of creative way of interacting with others. I think over the summer I’m going to send my good friends spontaneous letters in the mail with collages and poems. Relationships are so important to me and if I’m able to enact these little creative love expressions I think that would really incorporate the happiness activity of cultivating relationships and create a lot of tangible meaningful memories. 

I’m not sure how we got into our next topic but we started ironically talking about how Sami should just take the genre of mumble rap to the next level and just start rapping nonsense - just sounds with a word thrown in here or there. Somehow he has perfected the art of the annoying japanease boy band singer and this was the foundation of his mumble rap sound. Then I guess I joked about how he should just yell a word that seemed so out of context like “GUMBO!” and he started doing it and created a mumble rap around exclamations of gumbo. I know this probably doesn’t sound funny at all but we were literally CRYING laughing. It was so ridiculous and I think we both share a sense of humor for absurdity and irony. Once we had our sound down, I started talking about how he needed to talk about his raps when being interviewed. His raps didn’t need actual words, they were transcendental, they existed beyond our worldly perception of music and poetry and brought us straight to the essence of God. We both envisioned the dream of a giant crowd of people singing along with him at a festival, sounding like a plethora of various whale sounds. It was beautiful. And hilarious. And when summer hits we’re gonna record our first song ‘shawdy want gumbo’ - my family lives in New Orleans and I visit a few times a year so I’m going to snap the cover art - a picture of gumbo, maybe with his face superimposed on there too. I recorded him just yelling gumbo as a receipt for this beautiful conversation, but I don’t know how to add it to this post. I’m glad I recorded it though, because anytime I listen to it randomly I crack up laughing. 

just a cool earring!

The last part of my day was pretty spontaneous as I was planning on going home after hanging out with Sami. My boyfriend called me and told me that one of our friends Julie had just gotten engaged and they wanted to go celebrate at Dave & Busters with us. They had already drank a lot of champagne at their dinner so we went to go pick them up. They were both super happy and Julie was showing me her ring and they were talking about the proposal. 

(Also, she has a pet pig.. a video of whom I will post separately)

Lucky for me, my boyfriend is this insane luck magnet whenever we go to Dave & Busters. I mean, he always scores a 1000 ticket win. It’s insane. 

We played a lot of games together, it was definitely another workout - especially with the basketball hoop games and air hockey ( I was fierce). It also made me really happy to see people all enwrapped in love and become engaged. I’ve never had close friends get engaged so it was a new experience in that way to celebrate with them (P.S. they’re about 6 years older than me - so they didn’t get eloped or anything). 

Heres a photo of them loving and protecting each other from enemy spacebugs:

Once we were cashing in our tickets, I got Julie a “Future Mrs.” tiara, which was comically trashy, but they had lost their card with all their tickets on it so I wanted to use mine to get her something to commemorate her night, in the raw essence. Then we took Julie and Taylor home and I DJ’d some love related songs for them, which they pretty passionately yelled along to, so it was a good move. After that I headed home back to my cats to crawl in bed and process my best day! And sleep, of course. All in all, I’m so grateful for this project because without it I may have not even had this day, and all the hilarious and beautiful memories. This day was so enriching and uplifting for me and reminds me to take some time to just enjoy life. Unfortunately, after writing this whole blog up my computer died and the whole thing was deleted. I was pretty furious when it happened, but I just realized there was no other choice to accept it so I decided to use the happiness activity of cultivating optimism. Not only did I get to relive my best day once, but twice over, and I’m grateful for that.

WPS Idea pool

https://www.anasamoylova.com/work-1/#/sublime/Week 2-3  WPS - Initial proposals

This module allowed us to choose from 3 different methods of presenting our next project. We had to hand in our initial project proposal this week in order to be divided into our chosen groups - we had 2 choices to nominate, my main one was Page, as I’d like to create a lovely book for a long time now. However I am still unclear whether which idea I would like to start to work on, so I handed in two proposals - both are very sketchy so far.  Here I’ll copy & paste both forms, although I might have a brand new idea combining aspects from both proposals! All I know is that I’d like to work in a studio, creating still lives, working with a Hasselblad medium format camera and to shoot on colour film…

The first idea, ‘What is music?’ has formulated in my head a few months ago now, while I was travelling to work. Not an original idea, but I can be so enthusiastic if I find a great new song or artist! I guess this teenagerish dream of creating psychedelic still life compositions have been always lingering in my subconscious :D I did a few notes on how I want to start to work in the darkroom, I have to dig it up and upload it here.

The other idea is an ongoing struggle of mine - I don’t like to live in London as much as I used - but I am ‘grounded’ here because of my choice of getting an art degree in the city - after 8 years it’s harder and harder to leave my family and friends behind when I visit them in Hungary - but I know that I would never had the opportunity to study photography in my country, as the ‘art’ community is closely knit group, and if you don’t have a fine-artsy style you have no chance into getting into one of the leading art unis, like the Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design Budapest. Of course, I have never applied there, as I never had the confidence on doing so - that is why I have always liked this country, as everyone has a chance to build on their confidence and skills without any underlying judgements (as in Hungary people are very critical with each other and for some reason we don’t like to help each other, and I am strongly missing the sense of inhesion within my nation) - so the basic struggle is the sense of belonging, feeling lost between two worlds…

Anyway, here is the proposal:

For this particular idea I feel like to take a few self - portraits - which I really hate in general, but it would be interesting to include myself in a way. I am heading to the studio next Wednesday afternoon for a test shoot.

As I have mentioned, my second idea have already changed slightly - instead of juxtaposing images of London and my hometown in a book - I still want to create still lives, construct them, as I like to have control over my work. Taking Lorenzo Vittuli’s strikingly colourful images as well as Anastasia Samoylova’s assemblages for first inspiration, I am very much drawned to create similar photographs AND to include my self portraits as part of the assemblage?

Both artists are working with colourful pieces of tools to enhance the meaning and aspirations  behind their work.

Lorenzo Vitturi - Dalston Anatomy and Money Must Be Made

Using found material on Riddle Street Market in Dalston, his constructed still lives are strikingly colourful, picturing different cultures representing themselves on the market - only using tools and materials found on the market, cleverly piecing them together in his studio. This abstracted characterization of a place is very creative. Like he is bringing individuals back from the market to his studio, giving them ‘another’ life, a new identity. Indeed, he is juxtaposing still lives with portraits on diptychs, I guess that’s what he was trying to do. 

I cannot get over how his books are beautifully juxtaposed. Colours and textures are flawlessly following each other page by page, occasionally interrupted with a blank white page to start a new series of picture flow. The portraits he took on the markets are often rephotographed, by adding a new element to the prints as a brushstroke, coloured pigment powder and cut outs, sometimes layering a couple of photograph to give a dimension to the composition. On his website there are many diptyches from the Dalston series, juxtaposing still lives with portraits. 

I have seen his work in the Photographers Gallery 3-4 years ago, but I cannot find the photos on my Google Drive :( I remember this diptych from Dalston Anatomy, I guess the most popular one, but I remember this electric blue caught my eyes even back then.

Anyway, more inspirational photos I love:

http://www.lorenzovitturi.com/

African cultures vibrant colours must have soothed his heart while he was at the Lagos market documenting the gentrification of the area. His photos are also made for the purpose of capturing the essence of the places he is visiting - ohmy, I just realised what a cliche I have noted here. Like is not that obvious. ohwell, well done for me for this brilliant observation. 

Anastasia Samoylova - Landscape Sublimes 

https://www.anasamoylova.com/work-1/#/sublime/

‘Landscape Sublime project explores the connection between the natural environment and its representation through photography. I construct temporary assemblages out of internet-sourced images that I re-photograph with a digital camera to produce the final works. ‘

Her working process is based on found materials as well, only from the endless pit of the internet. Her main focus is on working with cliche imagery, using themes such as ‘Flowers, Lighting, Desert etc’, to recreate these sublimes in her studio, reprinting the images, folding and warping them, making like ‘building boxes’ of them in front of the lens, to create interesting compositions and to rhetorically ask questions about the endless image making flow of today’s society with digital camera became so widespread.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2CaGzzcXIac

Here are my notes and quotes from this video - ( as I’m too lazy to rewrite them here for the post, sorry :D ) 

she is interested in the perception of landscapes (…icebergs etc) not in the actual landscapes

‘the personal and collective idea of the environment, shaped by the existing images of that environment...’

her approach to photography - unmediated reality 

‘there is no such thing as non constructed image’

‘...the process of assembling a still life for her is a metaphor for the memory that blends pictures of different elements of the scene into a collage environment....’

using one main image, and then build the composition from there, adding more elements 

hours and days of production, assembling the photo, figuring out the light bit by bit

using mirrors, wrapping paper to reflect light

strips of images, curled up ones

core of Autumn Roads image - several conflicts, unanswered questions - found image - created image, straight vs composite image, landscape vs still life, natural vs artificial 

she says every photograph transforms space in one way or another…a photograph creates a new construction of a place…as framing does already

photographs are always constructed , which means that photography conveys a constructed reality

Looking at her photographs one cannot help but notice the 3D effect she is creating with her building blocks - and at the same time the photograph, specially on my laptop screen is flat, so she is tricking the eye and invites the viewer for closer observation. I would love to see her prints in real life in a gallery!

My assemblages would be representing each places - London and Bekescsaba -, using different materials, )maybe like Samoylova, photographs to build up a little construction...but what kind of paper she has been using to print her images? as there are no reflections on the prints at all, and she did state that she is using flash when photographing her assemblages)  and colour schemes ( Hungarian and UK flag colours?) 

How can I incorporate the self portraits ? -  having them printed out and then cutting myself out of it would suggest that I am lost in those places...? 

This work needs a lot of attention to detail and experimentation in the studio. In this case I need to book my Wednesday afternoons to work in studio - the previous day I have to gather my tools and ideas for the following day.

Tomorrow I’ll only play around with a few lights, might bring in some items to shoot some still lives. I’ll have a more finalised plan by next week on what to photograph :D I feel like I need additional research. 

Anyway, I guess constructing the photos in the studio is bloody hard and demands loads of effort and concentration. Also creativity. I don’t consider myself to be able to express my imagination on this level ( anyway, I cannot compare myself to anyone professional heh) , I guess I need tons of research in Dutch still life painting, some research in symbolism ( I have done my own research in reading about Dali and Frida Kahlo a few months ago, so hey, at least I’m tying.) and studio still life photography. New Objectivity, Formalism maybe...using striking shadows and colours...maybe Vivian Sassen’s work will be worthwhile to have a closer look again.

Melbourne Family Portraits Painting

Melbourne Family Portraits-Photo to Painting

Melbourne Family Portraits-Custom Family Portrait will be used for this article. The Photo to painting Process of the Melbourne Family Portrait Painting award winning painting was published in the Australian Artist's Magazine. Finally here... the first blog of 2019 ..after difficulties with web hosts, security etc I finally have set up this new blog to share my thoughts, ideas, experiences of being an online portrait artist since 2003. Some of my stories may be informative some strange experiences and some odd but I will share the artwork that I have done over the past 15 years. For those of you that commissioned this artwork I am sure you will be interested. Here goes with the first! Here are the decisions I faced with this painting process when created this painting of a family portrait. This couple was actually photographed at a wedding and they are cousins as well as 'best friends'. To show this Melbourne Family Portraits Painting process I will cover How and Why I took photo for portrait My choice of size and medium? What made me chose this subject? About the completed painting About the Artist Relevant Links In this post I will share what makes a good reference photo for a portrait painting. Highlighting issues of mood, atmosphere and a good likeness that is so important for the impact that painting will portray.

Why I took this photo – what was I looking for in my choice of subject?

I frequently get asked what would be the best photo for a portrait commission. After directing clients to visit my Melbourne Family Portrait website on taking the photo I discuss the need to chose a photo of high resolution that best typifies the subjects moods and likeness. If the subject never sees the side of their face then a portrait of a profile will not be a painting that they will accept. I was drawn to this subject for another reason. It was the compelling impact as well as the clarity. It was the The joy that this couple emanated Light source…their joy in laughter and the light their bodies gave off against the green foliage was very striking When I looked at them I could not help but smile. Funny thing is later while creating it I often found myself smiling at the subjects and the people viewing this artwork also smiled. So it was the EMOTIONAL IMPACT that radiated from the subjects and the light source lent a freshness to the subjects Personally I truly love painting children for their fresh complexion while I love painting older people for their character and expressions. Older people are more facially expressive. Their aged faces express more character.

Family Portrait Photo

ARTIST'S CAMERA FOR THE PHOTO Here is my photo that I took. I am not a good photographer as you will see. Well I didn't cut their heads off and it was not out of focus….so that is something in my favour. I would love more photographic skills but I am too impatient to use the time away from painting to master the skill. I have an old canon camera EOS kiss x 2. I set it to manual shoot and toggled the wheel to have it appear right and true to the day. I found as an artist that it is not what I see when capturing the photographic image but what information it will give me to express or portray the painting. Imagination is everything ! I want the photo to simulate an idea or vision I can use.

Why I chose this Medium for the Painting?

This choice was made when I considered the Mood and Atmosphere or Portrait Design I wanted for this Family Portrait. Pastels lend themselves to give an impressionistic dreamy effect. I prefer oil paints for great clarity, mood, drama. Both mediums are of the highest quality of pigment. Both will last for centuries. However in my opinion Pastels are best for impressionism. As for the Size of the painting I wanted 45 x 60 cms. This is the approximate largest size for pastels as they become very heavy when framing them under glass so do not lend themselves to the much larger sizes that oil paints on canvas allow. Why I Chose this subject?   >> For the sheer joy of immersing myself this the subjects joy! Melbourne Family Portrait Painting Completed  >>  FAMILY PORTRAIT PAINTING INFORMATION This painting was published in the Australian Artist Magazine The Article featured the step by step procedure in creating this pastel painting. I will provide these steps in a future blog for those that are interested. This painting also won awards with the Pastel Society of Australia. True to the nature it was created in many found themselves smiling at the joy the painting captured. About this artist… Cynthia Hargraves. I received the standard of Master Pastellist with the Pastel Society of Australia. Sadly not a lot of requests for Portrait Commissions are in pastel. However I still love working in this medium. I will go further into the mediums used to create my portrait commissions. About the Melbourne Family Portraits Painting Artist: Cynthia Hargraves… I was encouraged to paint from a young age as my Mother was an artist. It was not until a later age that I finally got serious with my art, gained a lot of tuition and experience and later shared that knowledge teaching workshops around Australia. Finally I realized that I was happiest simply painting. I will share some of these examples below Some interesting links of Painting Examples and Design

Painting in Steps Gallery of Portraits of People in a landing page of many genres Portraits of Pets and Animals Designing the Painting and Painting Materials used. The Photo – Photographing Process More Melbourne Family Portraits Painting Testimonials

I have had many questions over the years from interested artists and clients alike. With artists they usually want to know about materials and techniques.For these artists I will be following this blog with..Painting in Stages up until completion. Created in mostly Unison Pastels. Clients are usually interested on how they go about getting a Portrait Painting Commissioned. Here is the simplest ( view larger ) MELBOURNE FAMILY PORTRAIT COMMISSION PROCESS  I thought this article may help some who are worried about getting started with the commissioning process. I hope this has been helpful. Please let me know.....What would you like to see in the form of future articles? 

  Read the full article

An analysis of John and Paul’s artwork

I haven’t seen any analysis or comparison of the visual art of these two anywhere, and I do think it’s an interesting topic. So, I got a little carried away with the idea. Not a comparison of quality, mind, but an emotional one, and one which reveals their attitude to this kind of creative process.

Firstly the similarities: John and Paul both employ that kind of scraggly humour you see them use in their early interviews, and in In His Own Write in their art. It’s witty in a languid, musing way, particularly in John’s case, but I think there is an element of it too in the surrealist style of Paul’s work. With fairness to both of them being musicians first and artists quite a low second, their master of the medium is not the highest it could be, but that is not really the point. Certainly neither one cares much if a likeness is correct, and both of them create emotive works rather than representational works (well, Paul might have done some representational stuff I haven’t seen because it’s not online... but I doubt it’s really representational).

Let’s start with Paul. Technically, he has the upper hand in terms of craftsmanship of an artwork, if only due to the fact that the media he grapples with are far more complex than the pen and ink John prefers (oil, for instance). He fills every inch of his canvas with colour, he shades, he creates whole scenes rather than sketches. Every one of them feels in some way like a project, never a throw-away scribble as no doubt John considered much of his work. Every scene is also different, and many focus on different subjects, if any. Some depict real objects, others do not, and all of them have a piece of soul trapped inside. There is an anxiety in several, in the sickly bright colours, indefinable shapes, smeary brush strokes, and sometimes in the facial expressions of his figures. I actually find a fair number of his paintings uncomfortable to look at: they do weird things with colour, and they look, as I said, restless. But this is not a criticism: they are challenging paintings, and if not to the rest of the world, they are very important to him.

They are expressions of his feelings, and a product of his age (he only started painting in 1983). It seems to me that a lot of Paul’s demons go into these pictures, where they normally do not go into his words. They are almost entirely indecipherable, abstract looks at his subconscious, and like Paul himself they betray an inner depth without telling you what exactly that inner depth IS. Therefore they are harder to unpick than some of John’s work. The gloominess of some of them takes me a little by surprise, as does the sound understanding of the medium. Like many I assumed that John was the artist and no one else. There are a few paintings which have more logical backgrounds, like his pictures of the queen or of Linda. As in his music, empathy is the driving force: he draws as he writes, eternally inspired by the lives of others and coy (or perhaps just unsure) about his own life. If there are any self-portraits I cannot find them.

Now we move onto John, the minimalist. His drawings are almost brutally quick in some places, and achingly tender in others. He prefers blank ink to any other medium, presumably as it enables him to get something out quickly and with little hassle or practice: a direct pipeline to whatever he’s feeling in that moment. He tends to draw portraits or people more than anything, and unlike Paul he is prone to draw the same composition repeatedly - rather like how he “finds a note and hammers it home” when writing music, in his own words. Oh, and nearly all of these compositions are self-portraits or portraits of his family. So far I’d say these discrepancies between Lennon and McCartney are to be expected. But also, unlike Paul, there is an abiding sense of peace and simplicity in John’s drawings, particularly his family pictures, which were drawn in the late ‘70s. I find it hard not to smile a little looking at some of them: him and Yoko embracing, Sean between them, his own face looking passive and peaceable with round glasses, and often a soft wry smile. What is wrong with this picture? Is the title of one. It’s a challenge: nothing is wrong, you’re supposed to say, it’s a happy family.

There are two ways to interpret this. One is that John was genuinely experiencing peace and joy with his wife and son, and wanted to capture that joy through pictures. Every time he felt grateful for his life, he drew another portrait. The self-portraits are introspective, questioning, and despite being full of energy and character, are hopelessly blank as the eyes are invisible behind the glasses. The other way to interpret, the more cynical way, is that these are attempts to soothe himself, convince himself that things really are great. There is much to suggest that he was not really feeling on top of the world between 1976 and 1980, being away from music, and away from Yoko a lot of the time, shut inside his apartment. As usual with John’s frustrating mind, I am inclined to believe a little of both interpretations. It is also possible that for every happy drawing there are three angry or depressed ones, which Yoko prefers not to show the world. But it seems to me that these pictures are John, unusually, looking for the good in his situation, rather than the bad. He counts his blessings, and his blessings take the shape of Yoko, Sean and himself.

It’s strange that even in their art, there is this fearful symmetry. Where Paul is charming and upbeat in music, John goes growly and bluesy. Where Paul is frenzied and enigmatic in his art, John becomes open, unburdened and simple. But I don’t think that this is to be taken as a contradiction to their personalities. Because in John’s artwork there is, amidst the peace and weirdness, that knowing smirk, the wit and awareness that he is right. He doesn’t need to draw different things. He knows what he wants, he knows what he knows, and nothing’s gonna change his world. And in Paul’s work, the dominant flavour is one of experimentation: what if I tried this, or that, or these together. He pushes himself out, technically and physically exerting himself (those paintings are massive, John’s are probably about A5 in size) to create what he can.

I’m sure there is more to say on this. I haven’t really expressed it as well as I could, so I’ll just leave a couple of pictures for comparison. Here’s Paul’s painting, Unspoken Words, and John’s drawing, Real Love. They both give satisfaction in their own way, Paul’s in the proof of his emotional complexity and John’s in the honest expression of peace and happiness… And both (unsurprisingly) in their natural ability to translate feelings into art so fluidly. Personally I prefer John’s stuff, just on an aesthetic level, but that’s just my personal taste.

The Visceral Energy Expressed By Artist, Dawn Okoro

Interview by: Luma 

| May 9, 2017

“Chassis”

Harpers Galleria: There's a way that you render black women that reads clear the agency one has over how they are depicted, which makes one believe that because you are a black woman yourself, these works are authentic. Do you believe that by you being a black woman this visibility of agency of oneself in your works is more of an honest depiction than if not done by a woman of color and if so, is that because you are exploring your own self in these works as well?

Dawn Okoro: I do believe that being a black woman I am able to create work from a perspective that is unavailable to someone who is not a woman of color. To some extent, I am exploring myself in my works that address the agency over how one is depicted. My work comes out of self-reflexivity. I’m trying to process some of the ways that women are portrayed in popular culture. It is a continuous cycle of cause and effect.

Harpers Galleria: When looking at your work it appears that there's an importance in your selection of muses. Explain the relationships you have with your muses, the process in the collaboration, and the significance of the bond with your muses in the outcome of the art.

Dawn Okoro: I find my muses for my artwork in a couple of different ways. Usually, I will have an idea of what I want the model to look like. I choose models from the website that links photographers with models. If I don’t know the model well, I am never sure if she is the right fit until the actual photo shoot takes place. If the model and I have the right vibe, the result is an abundance of photos that I can use as image sources.

Dawn Okoro: Other times, I will meet people and feel inspired to make their portraits. I am working on multi-media project now inspired by a musician I met through a friend. She posed for paintings and will be featured in an art video I am creating.

Harpers Galleria: In your "Black and Yellow" series the works are emotional, even performative by the pose of the subjects and in the way in which the composition is cropped in an analytical view of the muses. The visually igniting yellow background color that accents the stark black rendering of the figures drives an intense emotional reaction. Explain the visceral energy being expressed in these works.

“Cross”

Dawn Okoro: The work in my “Black and Yellow” series is inspired by the work of French photographer Thierry Le Gouès. He is a white man who has shot striking black and white images of black women. I decided to take that concept and create paintings from a black female gaze. To create image sources for the paintings, the models were painted from head to toe in black grease paint. Then they were photographed in black and white. Instead of white, I decided to use yellow in my paintings because it stands out, it signifies enlightenment, and it is associated with the deity in many religions. The paintings are meant to be calm and confrontational at the same time.

“Pentagon”

“Calm”

Harpers Galleria: You further your examination of the visibility of black women in the "Selfsploitatation," series, in which you investigate the exploitation, coercing, and self-agency in the sharing of sexualized selfies to a partner or online. The way in which you publicize the subject in center view of the composition or obscure the audience's view by cropping off the subject at the edge of the void are interesting and challenges the viewer in whether to read the image as empowering or discomforting. Explain in detail the concept of how you are utilizing compositional space to explore the diminishing of private space with the sharing of semi-nude images to the public.

Dawn Okoro: I used compositional space in the pieces to help draw attention to the subject. To me, the subject being framed by a wide open space also showed that the subject is alone. For some of my pieces, I photographed models to create image sources. I had the models pretend that they were taking selfies in lingerie. Being a pretty modest person myself, those photoshoots were sometimes uncomfortable for me. In my “Selfsploitation” series, the viewer is catching a glimpse of what seems like a private moment.

“Robyn”

“Untitled 3”

“Untitled 11”

Harpers Galleria: What's so compelling about your work is the various form of ways of viewing black women that you experiment with. Your use of saturated abstract colors and composition cropping makes the viewer really feel and analyze the subject. The viewer is observing a woman in ways they probably commonly don't do and it lingers with them in how society limits our view and perception of women to a one-dimensional character. Explain the significance each method of showing the different representational dimensions of women of color is to you, as well as the viewer.

Dawn Okoro: Ultimately I want to show black women in a positive light. I always want to portray black women, and any person for that matter, in a responsible way. Much of my work allows me to celebrate a beauty that I don’t see celebrated enough. Other times I want to use my own agency to reclaim and recontextualize a view that is often seen as negative.

Harpers Galleria: What is the dialogue you wish the viewer will have with themselves and with others when looking at your works?

Dawn Okoro: I love it when a viewer looks at my work and has that “ah-ha!” moment. I hope that the viewer feels challenged and inspired to further examine the way we view black women in society.

Harpers Galleria: What can we expect next from you in the future?

Dawn Okoro: I have been experimenting with mediums outside of painting and drawing. I am experimenting with ways to make my paintings come to life.

Follow Dawn Okoro

Website: https://okorostudio.com/ Instagram: @dawnokoro Twitter: @dawnokoro Snapchat: @dawnokoro Facebook: Dawn Okoro Studio Tumblr: dawnsartlab

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