mixed media, collage

“Do you know that phrase “You can achieve anything if you put your mind to it?” Well who knew that it was actually true! That is what I based my project on. Knowing that you can do anything you want, within government laws/rules of course, is just crazy. In a whole, my Social Perspective project was based on Personal Freedom/Freedom of Expression. Personal Freedom is the freedom to have the right to live. I was inspired by the SOS Art Retrospective artworks “Hunting The Whale” created by Mario Barbi and “Outside Eden” created by Jim Conroy. These paintings share a technique in common that I admire and what I wanted to incorporate into my project. Then again the project didn’t turn out the way I’d expected it to be, I still wanted to incorporate the technique. The technique involved streaks of color instead of solid lines and enclosed shapes. There are no shapes or distinct lines. I just admire how the painting came together with only streaks of different colors.
I knew what Personal Freedom was, but obviously I wanted to know more because I am a curious person. Besides the obvious true personal freedom is to live as you are, to do what you want, and to spend time with people you like. Personal Freedom is Human Rights. It is the freedom to express who you are. Be who you want when you want. I think Personal Freedom is beautiful and is guaranteed to be my favorite type of freedom, mainly because it covers several types of freedoms under one category. I learned that Personal freedom is the freedom to be yourself, which I think is very important. Who are you going to be if you are not yourself. You are your own person.
When it came to picking the subject of my project I wanted to do something I strongly agreed with and wanted to express into my own personal art piece. I immediately knew I wanted to do something relating to people’s rights, and personal rights and freedom just clicked with me and I wanted to do something more with the topic. When I think of freedom I immediately think of a field of flowers with hills leading to the sun. When it came to personal freedom I wanted to create a sunrise which meant to me “new beginnings”. I pictured a girl standing in a field of flowers staring at a sunrise thinking about all the things that she could do within her life. I wanted the girl staring at the sun to symbolize someone staring the world in the face. To create my art piece I wanted to use mixed media and not just acrylic paint. So I started off with painting the canvas creating the grass fields and the sunrise. I then used a mixture of green, brown, gold, yellow, and bronze small beads to create the road the girl was going to stand on. I used beads because I wanted to have some texture in my piece and I thought it would look cool and bring some creativity into the piece. I then made the girl out of cardboard and ended up painting the cardboard so it looked like the backside of a girl. I then attached the cardboard girl onto the canvas and the beaded road by using hot glue, so it looked like the girl was standing on the road looking off into the distance.
The message I wanted to convey in this art piece was that life is a new beginning. You can make a new beginning just like that in life. New beginnings mean new life. Just staring at my art piece makes me feel more lively. It reminds me that life is full of adventures and knowing that you can do anything you put your mind to really opens the mind. It gives you a happier and more positive look at life. It almost makes you want to imagine yourself as the girl in the painting. Imagine yourself standing in a grassy field full of flowers looking at a sunrise while wind is blowing through your hair. You deeply breathe in and out thinking about the new journeys that life can bring. It really just calms my mind when I visualize myself as the girl in my art piece.“