The Visionary
Rebekah B.
-
My self-portrait, ‘The Visionary’, represents my struggle with identity and finding my place in the world. As a queer teenager living in America, my future feels infinitely out of my grasp and completely uncertain. Given the current political and social injustice around me, I often feel hopeless, enraged, heartbroken, and confined.
I use the vibrant colors in this piece to express the numerous emotions I feel when I think about my future. The hot pink background is both shocking and unnatural, removing the piece—and myself—from reality. My sagging eyes and dripping tears illustrate the exhaustion of being a student and feeling like another unit in the factoring machine that is our society. My eyes—passionate in either love, hope, or fury—stare off into the distance as I try desperately to create vision of my future in order to escape the suffering and uncertainty of the present.
This piece is a message to myself; a reminder of the creative, loving, and tenacious person I am in spite of the adversity I face.
-
Through art, I am able to express my ideas, visions, and feelings in an infinite number of ways. My paintbrush acts as the bridge to my inner world. When I have created art, I have made something wholly my own. My artwork serves as therapeutic expression and as a record for the person I am becoming.
