"Anxiety" is about just that--- how it feels to experience a panic attack. My own experience happened in a car: I was with my family. I wanted to show that anxiety feels like you're trapped: it feels like being trapped in a car with your own demons, with no ability to escape it. Sometimes, panic attacks happen when the people surrounding you are happy and enjoying the moment, while you are in a different world, unable to join them.
"Eye Contact" is about how unrequited love feels like, and the loneliness that accompanies it. The narrator is looking at this person's eyes, while they don't know they are being observed by their secret admirer. The narrator feels a surge of warmth in their chest while looking at the person, but gets caught and realizes that the person they love will never reciprocate their feelings.
"Existential Crisis" is about how alone someone feels when they can't seem to find or identify a purpose to their life. It's an experience that no one can really solve for you, other than yourself. The pain of not knowing what your life, your actions, and your existence means or contributes to the grand scheme of things can become unbearable to some people (even to the point of self-destruction). This is the most intense form, or the climax of pain and isolation, that a person experiences emotionally in their life.
"Adult Stage" is about the shock a young adult feels when being alone in the world. I wanted to show the shock you feel when you go from a very sheltered life, into being unleashed unprepared for the chaos you often find in the "real world." The stimulation anxiety this person feels only amplifies their feeling out of place. I wanted to show this stage of life where (most) people experience fear in being all on their own.
"Fetal Stage" is about the beginning of a human's loneliness. Our first experience with isolation is in the womb, but we don't see it as a negative one. We are content with the warmth and safety and how being alone shields us from the dangers of the world. However, the world eventually sparks our curiosity enough to the point where we leave our comfort zone, even though we are unprepared for the events to come.
My art piece was a reflection on an experience I had in Mexico. My sister and I had experienced a strange event in my grandparents' house, which made my older sister get scared. We dragged our mattress to the floor of our parents' bedroom, and I held her hand to comfort her. My entire life my sister has always been my protector-- the one who would keep me safe and help me. That night was the first time I had ever taken on a protector role with my older sister, and it impacted our relationship in ways I could never imagine.
"I Am You" is about how when we grow up, the roles become reversed between parent and child. When I was little, my parents would hide the truth from me to protect me and so I wouldn't have to carry the burden of knowing such awful things about the world. Now, I look back at what they did, and I feel disgusted (even though I love them) at how much easier it would have been if they had just been honest with me. Ever since my brother Matthew was born, I have felt very protective of him and I want to conserve all the good in him. I know that eventually I will have to make a choice: to lie to him and carry that lie in my conscience, or to be honest with him when he grows up and watch as his hope dies, and his goodness starts to crumble and fade away as a result of knowing.
My artpiece is titled, "Heavenly Curse." The message I wanted to send was how when you are a child, you tend to romanticize the people you love and think they are perfect. As you grow up, however, you realize that they have a monstrous and ugly side to who they are. An essential part of growing up is realizing that everyone you know has a good and evil side to them, but that is what makes them human. In the end, it all boils down to whether or not you truly love them. If you don't think they are worth it, then you should let them go and stop keeping them in your life. If you love them and think they are worth fighting for, then you will accept them as they are and stay with them anyway. This is the reality of what love is: a sacrifice full of heaven, but also of hell.
"Ambiguity" is a very personal piece. If I had to tell my younger self one piece of advice that I would need for when I grew up, is that there is no real right or wrong, except for the universal laws. I spent most of my childhood worrying about what the right thing to do was, but I realize now that morality varies from person to person (right and wrong is mostly subjective). All human beings, adults included, are just people who are trying to do the right thing, despite their faults. We have to do what we feel is right, even if it might not be compatible with society's black-and-white approach to ethics, but has no place for emotionally-driven actions. Our culture may be wrong about some things that may make us feel uncertain about what we do if we follow them, but we need to do what we feel in our hearts to be right, so that we can have at least a clean conscience.
Artists Express and Tell Stories
"Innocence" by Emily Barajas
Canvas Paper, Acrylic Paint, Colored Ink, Lettering Pens, 2H Drawing Pencil, Ruler, Porous Point Pens
2015
Art Foundations
"Innocence" is about my experience with adolescence. Childhood is a wonderful time of your life: you are happy, believe the world is a place that values justice and that has mercy, and it is a time when you have irrational fears and the ignorance to think that the worst thing that can happen is losing your favorite stuffed animal. But once that "child" inside of you dies, you are exposed to so many things that are worse, and facing them by yourself is extremely overwhelming. I made the mistake of believing that growing up would give me power to make my own choices and confidence, but instead it gave me a strange sense of fear, and now I long to go back to being that happy child for just one more time. I want other people to know that they should enjoy their childhood as much as possible, and for those who have already lost it, to know that they are not alone in feeling the same way that I do.
"Innocence" by Emily Barajas
Canvas Paper, Acrylic Paint, Colored Ink, Lettering Pens, 2H Drawing Pencil, Ruler, Porous Point Pens
2015
Art Foundations
"Innocence" is about my experience with adolescence. Childhood is a wonderful time of your life: you are happy, believe the world is a place that values justice and that has mercy, and it is a time when you have irrational fears and the ignorance to think that the worst thing that can happen is losing your favorite stuffed animal. But once that "child" inside of you dies, you are exposed to so many things that are worse, and facing them by yourself is extremely overwhelming. I made the mistake of believing that growing up would give me power to make my own choices and confidence, but instead it gave me a strange sense of fear, and now I long to go back to being that happy child for just one more time. I want other people to know that they should enjoy their childhood as much as possible, and for those who have already lost it, to know that they are not alone in feeling the same way that I do.