Themes

Most of the time, my artwork reflects my mood or my interests at the time.  When I was going through a bad break-up I was drawing a lot of skulls and body parts; most of it was morbid things. I went through a phase after a break-up where I was drawing human hearts in the weirdest ways possible. I drew this one heart to look like a tree frog pattern with a tree frog coming out of it. I went through another phase where I wanted to draw was flowers and plants. They weren’t the typical roses and tulips though. I was drawing orchids and Venus flytraps with insects in them.

My school projects even reflect my moods and interests. My grandmother had died over winter break, so when we returned for the spring semester, my teacher set up a still life with a bunch of different objects, one of which was a cow skull. I was obsessed with this skull to the point I made my 6 drawing series about this skull. I think it was the line between life and death that I liked about it, especially because in some weird way, it gave me some reassurance that my grandmother was still with me. It was just a comforting idea that even when someone or something dies, pieces of them are still left behind.

I really can’t just draw a pretty thing and leave it at that. There always has to be some strange, misplaced object in what I’m doing to make it part of me. My self-portrait for my Digital Concepts class had all of these pretty objects displayed in my hands except for this eyeball with the muscles attached to it. In this other self-portrait I had to do in Illustrator, I drew myself as a rag doll instead of taking a picture of myself and just making it realistic. My artwork needs to have that one piece that really makes it mine, and usually that’s something gross or creepy even.  It always needs something strange and unusual because to quote Lydia from Beetlejuice, “I myself am strange and unusual.”