Advisor: Lorena Salcedo-Watson and Martin Levine

Creating art that looks impressive and representational has consistently been a goal of mine. Artwork with extensive thought and deeper meaning was not important.. Although I dabbled in creating work that did not fit this mold I was not met with the same praise and admiration. This steered me to spend most of my art career trying to master technicality. It wasn’t until attending Stony Brook University that I then realized that the hardest part about being an artist wasn’t about technicality, it was about finding the purpose for what you are creating.
As I began the endeavor of completing a senior honors project I knew that the work that was going to be shown needed to be meaningful. While this was still fairly new to me I struggled with finding what I could create that would make an impact. I felt I didn’t know enough about the world and did not feel knowledgeable enough to make some kind of political or social statement with my work. Something that I did know a lot about was myself and the struggles I face inside my mind everyday. However as I began creating work centered around my own mental issues I very soon felt an immense amount of embarrassment and fear of allowing this amount of vulnerability to be shared with my peers and professors. I began to feel that it was not as important and meaningful and felt a great amount of guilt about creating work that was centered around myself rather than more important issues and topics that are beyond me. It was too late to start from square one and I pushed through although what came was a growing resentment of the work that I was creating.
In an attempt to reconcile the relationship between myself and my artwork, I consulted with other artists and found that they held the same kind of fears and insecurities about their own work. I soon realized that I wasn’t alone in this struggle and that maybe the work I’m sharing is not just about me, but can be about anyone who is also facing the same kind of mental turmoil. An interaction that I had at the Spring 2023 Stony Brook Art Crawl sticks out to me as the first time I knew that my own artwork had an impact on someone. On this day my professor Lorena Salcedo- Watson encouraged myself and other students to participate in the Art Crawl and give a talk about some of our work that was being shown in the URECA exhibition. As a deeply anxious person this was a very difficult and scary thing for me to do, but knew that it was important in order to grow as an artist. After giving my talk I was approached by a student who said that they were hoping that I would be present at the art crawl. She began to tell me how my first lithograph Talking Hurts resonated with her so much that it brought her to tears. She told me how much she was able to relate to it and how much it meant that she felt that she had been seen and understood.
Creating Talking Hurts was my first introduction to lithography, a printmaking process that soon would become a favorite of mine and would go on to be the main medium in my senior show. It also would be the first push to continue making self portraits and have myself as the subject for future projects. The process of creating my first lithograph was an exciting, but also labor intensive one. Leading up to it I knew how much went into creating one of these prints and this influenced the amount of care I put into the subject matter and the quality of my drawing. I chose to create a narrative around my social struggle with being brave enough to speak my mind. Sewing my mouth closed is meant to make the mentality that is stopping me from speaking my mind into a physical act to further explain how intense these thoughts can be.

Title: Talking Hurts, Date: 2023, Dimensions: 11 x 14 inches, Medium: Lithograph

Although my brain is constantly running through thoughts and ideas, it is also preventing me from sharing them. This constant battle can be exhausting, as it feels like I am fighting myself 24/7. The times when I do speak can be mentally grueling for me, preventing me from ever wanting to speak again.

My first proposal for senior honors was to create work around my identity and figuring out who I was in an attempt to find self love and acceptance. While this is still a theme in my finished project, I found that much of my work revolved around the obstacles that have prevented me from finding my own identity and the difficulties I have with just simply living and being. To elaborate, I am an anxious person and therefore the work I have produced presents a lot of anxiety. While this may not have been the goal for each piece, anxious thoughts are what occupy my mind and it can be difficult for me to think beyond these thoughts and create work that does not include them. The first artwork that is presented in my show is the first introduction to my hyperconscious thinking. The lithograph triptych I Hate That I Hate Myself and That Makes Me Hate Myself is the epitome of this thinking and trying so desperately to fight against it. I am aware of my self deprecating thoughts and anxious feelings and know that they are irrational, however no matter how hard I may try, they will always be there.

Title: I Hate That I Hate Myself and That Makes Me Hate Myself, Date:2023, Full triptych, Medium: Lithographs
with embroidery and buttons

Self hate is a lot easier to fall into than self love. Deprecating thoughts can be very difficult to stop when it’s a habit that has persisted for a long time. This triptych shows a narrative of an internal battle that I deal with everyday. It’s frustrating to constantly have hateful feelings towards myself. It is even more frustrating that just loving myself isn’t the easier option.

Title: Part 1 of triptych, Date: 2023, Dimensions: 11 x 14 inches, Medium: Lithograph with embroidery and buttons

Title: Part 2 of triptych, Date: 2023, Dimensions: 18 x 24 inches, Medium: Lithograph with embroidery

Title: Part 3 of triptych, Date: 2023, Dimensions: 18 x 24 inches, Medium: Lithograph with embroidery

To juxtapose with this triptych my painting next to it Comfortable in Solitude offers moments when these negative feelings are less present. This is the only painting in the show and I think the medium pairs well with the more positive messaging.

Title: Comfortable in Solitude, Date: 2023, Dimensions: 30 x 40 inches, Medium: Acrylic painting

This is a single painting that is part of a larger body of work that focuses on introversion. My bedroom is where I feel things the most, create the things I’m most proud of, notice things that I love about myself, and feel safe enough to be myself. Outside of this space, things are very different. My brain isn’t relaxed and is concerned about everything I do and say. It’s as though my own space is the only place I feel that I can truly live. This feeling is embodied through the goldfish that surround me in this same space. They are an extension of the liveliness I feel when I am alone.

Coming after Comfortable in Solitude is another lithograph series entitled Comedic Relief. While all the work presented in my project is extremely vulnerable, I myself am not a very vulnerable person. As mentioned previously it has been difficult for me to believe that the message I am sharing is important and needs a space to be heard. This work represents these same feelings of impostor-ism and hiding away from vulnerability.

Title: Comedic Relief, Date: 2023, Dimensions: 36 x 36 inches, Medium: Lithograph, block printing and chine colle
on paper

I find I am incapable of ever taking myself seriously and would rather hide behind comedic responses to serious mental struggles I face rather than vulnerable ones as I often write these hardships off as unimportant. This work also plays as a double meaning for impostor syndrome and struggles with feeling incapable to live a successful life as I continue to grow into adulthood. The progression of clown makeup is representative of both of these themes as I attempt to cover up any vulnerability.

Title: Part 1 of series, Date: 2023, Dimensions: 13 x 15 inches, Medium: Lithograph

Title: Part 2 of Series, Date: 2023, Dimensions: 13 x 15 inches, Medium: Lithograph with block printing

Title: Part 3 of Series, Date: 2023, Dimensions: 13 x 15 inches, Medium: Lithograph with block printing

Title: Part 4 of Series, Date:2023, Dimensions: 13 x 15 inches, Medium: Lithograph with block printing

Next to Comedic Relief is my most recent lithograph Looking Back. Similar to the theme of my triptych, Looking Back is symbolic of a Hyperconscious existence as it reveals my struggle with derealization and feeling outside of myself. I do not feel that I am viewing the world from a first person point of view. My “eyes” are not looking in front, but constantly back at myself.

Title: Looking Back, Date: 2023, Dimensions: 10 x 10 inches, Medium: Lithographs

Title: Looking Back, Date: 2023, Dimensions: 10 x 10 inches, Medium: Lithograph

Title: Looking Back, Date: 2023, Dimensions: 10 x 10 inches, Medium: Lithograph

I often feel I view myself through a detached third person perspective. I am constantly passing judgment towards myself and perceiving myself before anyone else can. This prevents me from gaining true connection with others as I continue to fixate on my own insecurities.

My show ends with my oldest works, Talking Hurts and Demonic Expression. While each piece in the show including Talking Hurts is centered around internal judgment, Demonic Expression is the only one that focuses on external judgment and my choice to ignore it and find self acceptance. Initially I was not going to include this lithograph because I felt like it was an outlier among the others. However, I felt that it was important to conclude the show with something that represents what I hope to achieve in life, self love and acceptance. Although this work does not represent internal struggle, it does tell a story of living through judgment from others, and choosing to still be myself. It represents to me that I do have the ability to persevere and have an identity of my own that is not completely manipulated by irrational insecurities.

Title: Demonic Expression, Date: 2023, Dimensions: 18 x 25 inches, Medium: Lithograph

This work was inspired by the experiences I’ve had as a woman who enjoys expressing herself through tattoos and piercings and the judgment that has come along with it, specifically by those of the Christian and Catholic religion. In this work I chose to put myself as a visibly tattooed and pierced person in a scene that is reminiscent of some renaissance portraiture of religious figures such as Mary Magdalene. While I’ve been labeled by others as “demonic”, I am shown here in a setting that is the opposite of that while still expressing myself with the same things that made others pass judgment on to me

Creating Hyperconscious Existence was an emotional, but fulfilling journey for me as an artist. Mental health is a very uncomfortable topic to talk about as it is not always taken as seriously as our physical health. Even I had trouble convincing myself that it was important enough to bring awareness to. Using self portraiture to present these thoughts and feelings made it even more daunting, but it allowed me to express these internal battles as authentically as possible.