Artist Statement

Ever since I was a child, art has been my passion. It has always had a great impact on my life, and, as I grow older, I’ve learned not only a deeper appreciation for my own artwork, but also everyone’s, and the impact it has on people.  Throughout my artistic career, my self and my artwork has grown and changed shape into something with meaning and feelings, both on paper and on screen. When your a child, you create artwork for the sake of drawing, or painting during school, to give meaning to a sentence you’ve written, but as I grow towards adulthood, I’ve come to understand a deeper meaning hiding in all things beautiful, all things artistic. As I’ve created more artwork, and learned how to create different, new and more advanced types, I have grown and developed. During my high-school career, I’ve acquired my own skills and styles. I went from an artist who generally created things with paper, paint, ink and canvas, to all this but with graphic design on computers. By having this experience, and learning to create graphic design, I’ve come to develop a style that not only speaks to me, but speaks in volumes in the messages it says. This is why I make my art; each piece is unique and expresses an idea in my mind or something I feel about a wide variety of things. My artwork expresses the aspect of my life, and even society, creating my own philosophy of my life in general. With every piece I complete, I find that I express unique parts of my self with amazing details; but, although I create my artwork to show a message, I also create it for a bigger reason. To create something beautiful. Not only does this beauty appeal to me, but I try to create works of art that all people can appreciate in their own way; this personal connection with the artwork allows me to further deepen and enhance my style and creations and open my mind to the inspiration found all around me, and go above and beyond what I think I can do. Although sometimes my work can seem very unusual or dark, I don’t try to scare people with my art, but rather allow viewers to embrace it and further analyze its meaning.

I love expressing myself through various different art forms including both visual and media arts. By using a variety of different art forms to work with, I am able to explore different techniques and find new ways to express my self and my style. Throughout my high school career, I’ve been opened up to and used several new tools to create artwork like: Photoshop, Illustrator, Digital Tablet and Photography. Although, I’ve always had my mind set in visual arts, like painting, it is media arts, like graphic designs and the drawing illustrator program that I’ve come to find my passion. Throughout all these different mediums and creation processes, I’ve come to create my own identity as an artist which can be observed in my works. The artwork that I tend to create takes volumes in both time and patience, and because of this, I never fail in creating something that’s to my high standards. I’ve found that. by incorporating drawing as an aspect helps me express one of my talents, but also allows me to make all my artwork coincide with each other, thus making them all recognizable as made by the same artist. With this in mind, I’ve noticed a constant theme of an edgy look, mostly containing skulls and sharp lines, and unique and detailed line work, which can be found in a large majority of my pieces.   All my artwork is full of life in its own way, whether it be full of bright colours like “Personal Collage” or the beauty of flowers and angels found in my “Photography Portfolio”, where in death there is light. This personal style is not only visible in my own life and fashion, but also is found in the artwork that I create, such as “Unraveled Thoughts”  and “Skull of life”. My artwork is created to share what I feel and what my opinions and take it on the world, so it should reflect my artistic style and my personality.

For my final piece in my Media Arts course I decided to use my favourite medium of media arts called Adobe Illustrator and use this and the digital drawing tablet to draw and create my own deck of cards, creating my own interactive piece. With this piece of work, I decided to challenge myself with the task of hand drawing the whole project in digital form. I drew out 12 characters from the movie “Alice in Wonderland” to go on the face cards of each suit, a realistic back design for the back of the cards and later drew images to make a box for the cards. Although the final piece was very time consuming and technically changeling, I am amazed at how wonderland it turned out. However comfortable I felt with Illustrator, this was the first chance I was given to truly showcase the skills I have. This project allowed me to use one of my many talents in drawing, and incorporate my own style in a hands on experience I’ve never had. With this piece I hoped to push myself with a difficult task and used the tablet as the only focus in my project, unlike any other one I’ve done. I hand drew realistic versions of the characters from the movie, and created an original and unique pattern for the back of the cards and the box images themselves. The card idea stayed consistent with my style in the sense that I choose to do the Tim Burton version of the film. His movies always have a dark, eerie feeling, a sense of style that I can relate in my own work as both are usual to the eye. The character’s are full of great detailed, although the viewer may not notice on first glance, and the overall execution of the piece was something completely new to me, both in process and technique. By making the cards realistic both in shape, style and look, I was able to successfully create a piece of truly unique Alice in Wonderland playing cards.