i'm good
2020
A fundamental lesson I learned about human behavior is that people tend to avoid saying what they truly feel to others. From personal experience, “I’m good” became my comfort response to those trivial questions because I never wanted people to know that I didn’t have everything altogether, that deep down I wasn’t okay.
I’m good is a collage that abstractly reflects my anxiety and loneliness. It is an intimate piece that explores how overwhelming the many expectations and obligations that envelop me. The several images that make up this artwork were created by experimenting with various applications of acrylic paint (sponge, finger painting, watering down the paint, paintbrush, paper towels), photography, photoshop, and illustrator to achieve the texturized results.
Since I have a background in film and photography, I decided to incorporate a self-portrait in my artwork. The self-portrait was created by layering and blending three photos into one. As for the line images of the hands, those were photos I captured of my own hands that I image traced in illustrator.
I wanted to stress an overwhelming feeling through texture and by arranging the chaotic images around the self-portrait. Considerably, some textures were printed with mistakes; however, I experimented with them even further. All in all, the point of this piece is not to create the perfect image-it is to embrace the imperfections of the mind regardless of how chaotic it may become.
