Throughout senior year, I'm sure a lot of people have been reflecting on their high school experience or just their lives in general since they're about to reach another milestone in their lives, graduation and college. Questions about who you are and what experiences have shaped you are brought up when you write your college essays and when you try to describe yourself to your future classmates and peers. This kind of relates back to that theme of identity I had going on at the beginning of the year, but the more I think and kind of reflect back on experiences that have resonated with me and really impactful or memorable events, I always associate each event with a place. Whether you love or hate a place, there's no way the location itself and the people and places it holds can't impact you. I've painted a couple places that have either been very memorable or associated with certain random events that I still remember.
The first painting features Albany. Or at least how I like to picture Albany. It's what you drive by and see on runs: a barren landscape with the occasional dead tree or two among a sea of even deader grass. I think it can be quite pretty when paired with a purpley grey sky, but only pretty in the type of romanticized way that you see in photographs or paintings and you're like wow that looks so pretty, but if you were to go to that location you would hate it because it's just lifeless and lonely and desolate and the beauty in it is brought out by the piece of art.
The second painting is where I grew up, and what I will probably always think of when I think of the word home. It's weird to think of other people living in it now. It's the place where I spent hours on the couch reading books as a child, where my best friend would always chuck a rock at my window alerting me of her presence and telling me to come outside, where I tried to do a handstand for the first time and ended up pulling something in my foot, where I associate the best and probably the most happy moments of my life.
The last painting is of Shanghai. One of my favorite cities next to New York City. I just think it's very gorgeous and has a liveliness to it. I also have some weird memories associated with the place as a kid, and am very excited to be going there again over the summer and seeing it in a different perspective since I couldn't care less about the nightlife, the street markets, and the architecture as a child.
Last year I was all about doing large scale paintings. This year, I've figured out that large scale paintings just aren't my thing. I always feel better when a painting is on a smaller scale and it makes me less stressed thinking about the giant blank space looming before me, wondering how the hell I'm supposed to fill that up and keep the amount of detail I want to keep. For these location paintings, I've made them tiny and done on a very small scale. Small is just as hard as painting large, especially in regard to details and not having weird clumps. I've included a thumb in one of the pictures to show the scale of the paintings.
