"The Last Straw"

For my self portrait, I have decided to use acrylic paint on a canvas to capture my bottled up feelings during this pandemic. This painting is titled “The Last Straw”. I chose this title, because it shows what happens when you get overwhelmed in your thoughts. A woman was breathing fire onto Earth. I painted this in a state of anxiety and distraught. When I first showed this portrait to my best friend through Facetime, she asked me “Is that mother nature?” Personally I like my art to speak for itself so I like to get feedback and see what others get out of my work.. However, my portrait was really meant to symbolize my current mood at the time I was painting it. I felt hopeless. Being that none of us have seen such a virus affect our country in this way, most of us do not know the right precautions to maintain a good mental health. I had no idea how to properly cope with the fact that I had to live in a bubble without any means of knowing the end date of this chaos. In 2017, I started painting as a way to express myself. Later it became a healthy coping mechanism for me.

 In beginning my process to create “The Last Straw”, I painted the entire canvas black and added white dots to imitate the Solar System. Before going any further, I had no idea what I wanted to paint, so I just painted what I felt. Once I let the background dry, I began to paint to the profile of a woman with a small fro. That woman is me. I painted her blue to embody sadness and added blood red tears to show pain. One of my biggest influences in Modern Art is Frida Kahlo, because she has inspired me to express myself through my creativity.

 I created this portrait mainly to release my anxiety regarding the pandemic. After I finished, I could my current feelings looking back at me in picture form. I rarely use actual skin tones when painting people, because I like their emotions to show through the color I choose to paint them.