Advisor: Jason Paradis

For this series, I reflected on my memories to create six paintings that depict my experiences with disassociating and the process of coming out of that state. Each painting shows the world as I experienced, with the imagery being built from my recollection of those moments and the color and light reflect my emotional state. As the series progresses color becomes more vibrant and the figures are more well-defined. This is to depict how at my most disconnected there was clear separation between me and the people around me. I viewed the world as dull and gray, but through the process of reconnecting the world became more vibrant

Title: Useless, Spoiled, Brat, Date: April 2022, Dimensions: 20” x 24”, Medium: Oil on panel

The first painting of the series is Useless, Spoiled, Brat and it depicts the morning that directly caused me to pull away and disconnect. That morning I felt like I was completely on my own and connection with others would just hurt me. It was my freshman year of high school, and my father was driving me to school. My father can be a very angry man and when you grow up around that anger it becomes your own, so throughout my teenage years my father and I were constantly arguing. That day we argued as soon as we left the house, and it ended when he called me a “useless, spoiled brat”. It was not a surprise that he saw me that way, but hearing those words made all the fight leave me.

When going about making Useless, Spoiled, Brat I thought about what I remember the most about that day other than what my father said, and it isn’t much. Those words acted like a cloud that blurred out the details of the day. I just know that it was an early, dark morning and that we were in my father’s car driving the same route to school we did every day. This is what I drew on to create the painting. The stop sign sits at the end of my street and is a visual representation of the abrupt end to the argument and emotional turmoil I felt in that moment. The placement of the windows of the car was not only to show my perspective as I sat in the car, but also to create a feeling of being trapped and isolated, as they acted as the barrier between me and the rest of the world.

It is the darkest, bleakest, most desaturated in the series. As the first in the series, it sets the disconnected tone for the rest of the paintings. The next five paintings visually and tonally move away from the initial bleak tone that is created in the first painting. The first three paintings are all from 2015 and have the more desaturated colors and themes of isolation, as this is the year I was the most disconnected. The second and third paintings focus on the disconnection I felt from my family, with The Heart Attack depicting the event that created a disconnection and Family Reunions depicting a time when I felt the disconnection.

Title: The Heart Attack, Date: April 2022, Dimensions: 20” x 24”, Medium: Oil on panel

Growing up, since both of my parents worked my grandmother would come over and watch me. Once a week she takes me to her house because that was my day my parents wouldn’t be home until after 6. Even after I was old enough to stay home alone the tradition would continue until I got too busy with clubs. In 2015 it had been over a year since I went there on a regular basis and one day I went with my father to check on her because she was in her late 80s and lived alone with her cat. That day my father was still in the garage looking at something, and he sent me in first to let her know that we were there. I found her unconscious and unresponsive on the couch. I got my father and he got her to respond somehow, and then called the paramedics. I don’t remember anything from when I found her to when they took her out to the ambulance. As they took her out of the house, I sat on the countertop in her kitchen, like I had a million times before, just staring out into the living room. I spent what feels like a million hours growing in that house, and now I was completely numb to everything there.

It is that moment I chose to focus on for the second painting, as it is when I felt the connection I had breaking. Finding her like that, disconnected me from all the positive memories I had made there. Going back to her house just became a reminder of that day. In the painting I built the kitchen and living room from memory, I chose to make everything darker and more desaturated to demonstrate the disconnect I felt. Additionally I chose to make the kitchen the darkest section to make the kitchen feel smaller and more suffocating to help convey how I felt suffocated and isolated.

In the next painting, instead of conveying suffocation and being trapped I used Family Reunions to show the loneliness I felt even when I was in a crowd of people. I am incredibly lucky to have a large extended family that is dedicated to keeping in touch despite living in several states across the entire country. Every two years a reunion is organized in Vermont, this painting draws from the events of the 2015 reunion. It was my grandparents 60th wedding anniversary so we were having a party with my extended family plus some of my grandparents’ friends. One of the things that they had set up for the party was a slideshow of my family photos from the last 6 decades. Since I am younger than all of my cousins by at least 2 years, and being at least 5 years younger than most of them, in most of the photos I was absent. When the slideshow first started, we were all standing around watching it. With every photo someone had a story to go with it, so I was just standing there listening to everyone talk about these fond memories that I never got to be a part of because I was too young to be there. It was incredibly lonely, and I felt disconnected from the rest of my family because of it. I ended up spending most of the party standing by the windows alone just watching the rain outside.

Title: Family Reunions, Date: April 2022, Dimensions: 20” x 24”, Medium: Oil on panel

I chose that moment to create the painting because not only was it representative of how I felt that night, but it is also representative of the larger pattern of the family reunions where I usually end up sitting alone somewhere. I chose to have figures in the reflections of the windows to emphasize the feeling of being alone in a large group of people. There is color slowly being introduced into this painting that reflected that I was beginning to recognize I was disconnected. While previously being disconnected as an unconscious reaction to the events, that night I was conscious of the feeling and I didn’t like it. Standing there listening to have these connections that I couldn’t relate to hurt. Being able to recognize that that lack of connection hurt began my journey to reconnection.

The next three paintings cover memories from 2016 to 2018, as that was the time when I wrestled with my disconnection and the process to reconnect began Sweet Sixteen is the time when I realized what my path to reconnection was, Lit Mag is when I let those connections slowly form, and Summer of 2018 is when I actively chose to rely on and fully reject being disconnected.

On my sixteenth birthday I spent most of the day at school because even though it was a Saturday. It was the two show day for the musical, and since I was on stage crew I was there from noon to about midnight. Throughout the day my friends wished me a happy birthday, but the moment depicted in the painting came right before midnight. After we were done cleaning up backstage, they wished my happy birthday one more time by running down the hallway screaming which ended in a group hug. They were loud and a little bit crazy, but they cared. In that moment when I saw them running down the hallway I felt a spark of connection. I wasn’t just looking out into this gray, bland world anymore. There was a way for the world to be more vibrant and bright.

Title: Sweet Sixteen, Date: April 2022, Dimensions: 20” x 24”, Medium: Oil on panel

When creating this painting I chose to for there still be a measurable distance between the figures and since while conscious of my disconnection and the possibility of change, that connection did not form quickly. It is only when I recognized how to reconnect, not that I was reconnected. This is also why I chose to have the dark boxing in the sides of the hallway. On each side of the hallway there is a dark block that isn’t as suffocating or isolating as it was previously, but it is still closer and more present than the approaching figures. As one of the two middle paintings in the series Sweet Sixteen represents the muddled middle ground between completely disconnected and forming those connections. That muddiness is reflected in the lack of definition in the majority of the figures, with the definition continuing to wane as the figure move further back.

The muddiness begins to clear away in Lit Mag, as the distance between me and the people in the painting close and more color appears throughout the entire painting. Unlike the other paintings there is no one specific memory connected to this painting rather it is representative of all the memories made with this specific group of people. One of the clubs that I was a part of was the Literacy Magazine, which we all collectively referred to as “Lit Mag”, and despite being a creative writing club it turned into more of a drinking tea and talking club. The teacher that ran it had a corner in her classroom by the windows with plants and comfy chairs. We would take up residence in those chairs for like an hour after school just relaxing and taking a break from everything going on. Having a time and place when I didn’t have to worry or think about things made everything easier. I began to be able to count on the people there and form connections with them.

Title: Lit Mag, Date: April 2022, Dimensions: 20” x 24”, Medium: Oil on panel

In the painting this is shown through color being concentrated on the people of the painting, as well as their closeness and the amount of detail in their form. The figures in the previous paintings were not well defined since I did not have solid connections to them. Whereas in this painting while everything is not completely defined there is a clear difference in the definition and clarity from the previous paintings. Additionally, the color is more vibrant and visible than the previous paintings in order to show the shift in level of disconnection.

The last painting, Summer of 2018, mirrors the first painting in the dark setting of the painting, but instead of the darkness acting as a cage the darkness is mitigated through the light and color in the foreground. The memory connected to this painting is a moment I would consider a turning point out of disconnection just as the memory of the first painting was a turning point into disconnection.

I was on vacation at my aunt’s beach house for two weeks right after graduation. This night was about a week into that vacation. It was supposed to be my “high school is over, let’s take a break” vacation, but I was struggling with the relaxation part of vacation. That night I couldn’t sleep because everything was hitting me at once. I had survived the last four years so I would have the chance to leave and start over somewhere else, and I was getting that chance. I wasn’t sure if I would be able to do it though because I was moving away from everything I even knew to a place where I knew no one. So I couldn’t sleep because my thoughts kept spiraling. I went outside onto the porch to try and stop that spiral, but it didn’t. I just stood there, overlooking the street from the edge of the porch. That night could have been very different but I chose to rely on the connections that I had slowly formed. I messaged my friend, and she helped me understand that I had people I could rely on even if they weren’t physically there with me.

Title: Summer of 2018, Date: April 2022, Dimensions: 20” x 24”, Medium: Oil on panel

In the painting you can see my hands on the ledge, I chose to do this to depict how being connected was my choice. In the previous painting I was either disconnected as a reaction to something or the connections that were forming were because of the actions of others. In this painting I depicted the night when I started taking action to form connections and how that kept the darkness at bay. Not only is the foreground completely in color, it is most vibrant and draws all of the attention away from the darkness. I intentionally left the dark background mostly empty to contrast the emptiness of the darkness with the fullness of the light foreground. The first and last painting mark the beginning and end to this period in my life and the way the darkness is treated in each showcases this. In the beginning the darkness was acting as a barrier, isolating me, but in the end the light is acting as a barrier to the darkness.

This series begins with a completely disconnected, isolated worldview that is slowly transformed into a vibrant, connected one. The increasing presence of the light and color depict the introduction of connection in coordination with the increasing definition and closeness of the figures.

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