ARTIST STATEMENT
This series represents the concept of suffocation within our conscious and its correlation to our physical state. The artwork heavily conveys the personal effects of mental ‘suffocation’ that I have experienced as a young woman and my inability to ‘confess’ to myself the experience of suffering. I yearn for the viewer to experience my ‘confession’: physical suffering, nausea, disordered eating, and fatigue becomes irrelevant when you present a mundane ‘poker face’ like the three figures. The dull burgundy palette captures the emotions of my deteriorating mental and physical health; loss, anger, confusion, deeply rooted in feelings of absence, weakness, powerlessness.
ARTWORK PROCESS
After identifying the emotions of ‘self-suffocation’, I created a colour palette to refer to. The self-portraits, angled slightly away from the centre, referenced from my own images. I surveyed acquaintances to identify which three “I appear most content” despite being in extreme physical and mental distress. While the Watercolour and gouache captured sufficiently the thorough expressionist form and strokes, the size placement of the canvases, large, small, large, echoes the state of mind and feeling of helplessness and self-deceivingness. Black mediums and gesso, added with blue and maroon colours, created various grey hughes which directly correlated to personal context.
