my Artist Statement

I have always had a love for both art and being outside with nature. For my portfolio, I wanted to merge these two loves of mine and incorporate elements of nature into my artwork. My guiding questions were: What is the relationship between humans and art? How often is nature present in our lives? What are the positives and negatives of the connections that humans have with wildlife? I did not know at first whether or not I was going to depict the positives versus the negatives of the relationship between humans and nature. I later decided that I would show more positives between humans and nature and also try to remind viewers how prevalent nature is in our everyday lives. My final sustained investigation is how I can demonstrate the relationships between humans and nature through art. Over the summer, we were assigned different sketchbook prompts to brainstorm ideas for our portfolios. The first piece that I made was a portrait of a girl with butterflies in her hair and on her nose, which was inspired by one of my sketchbook drawings. For this piece, I tried to show the dangerous side of the human touch on wildlife, so I painted the butterflies as well as the girl’s hair on fire in bright orange. However, my later works depict the more positive aspects of humans and nature. Future works I created were old hands holding a shell in pencil on a drawing board, a baby sitting in a field of grass and plants in oil on canvas, and a naked back with flowers coming out of it in charcoal on paper. In the end, I want to reiterate to viewers that nature is so important to us and present throughout our lives.