Anxiety
As an artist I struggle to keep to one style due to feeling different levels of anxiety and pressure on different days; every piece I create can be completely different from the next. When I was younger my handwriting would change often due to the same problems, this had earlier been overlooked as I looked for subjects that were about anything but myself.
I am exploring my own interpretation of mental illness, specifically anxiety; I want to be able to display the everyday struggle of feeling anxious and out of place. Returning back to drawings, ink and charcoal, the child-like yet personal approach is close to home. Expressive lines, water and running ink have a deep inner sensation, as though they themselves are sharing more than they wish. The worry of over-sharing, being judged and stared at is a consistency in the anxious mind; the deep black markings and lack of colour aim to display the inner demons that everyone may face.
The aim of the works featuring eyeball people and eyeballs is not just to make you feel uneasy, although their gaze upon you is not friendly nor unkind – they are just there. They consistently look into someone else’s life.
The almost fungal appearance of the clustered eye balls draws you in, while in other works they have bodies and mimic more human characteristics – these however are more the lower end of the evolutionary scale, with some with human mouths. For the degree show, taking my eyeball people back a step and showing their raw appearance, sharing more than the fully bodied ones.
