When I came into the studio I had a lot of expectations set for myself about what my final product would look like. I began playing around with oil paint halfway through the fall and quickly fell in love. I spent time learning how to work with oil paint as I created my first piece. By the time I finished, I felt I had finally gotten a strong foothold with oil paints, and was ready to create an entire family of faces to display for the show. Then a global pandemic struck.

             For a while, I couldn’t even make art as I didn’t feel there was a point anymore. I felt robbed of my senior show, and of the senior year I had been looking forward to. But over time, I began creating more impulsively. I put less thought into every brushstroke and stopped thinking about an end goal. For the first time, I was creating art without worrying who would see it. The second piece was essentially a brain dump of a life I saw when looking at the first. I wanted my art to tell a story, to have meaning and depth, and to be more than just an aesthetic.