Week 2 @ Coursera.Org

here's my art submission to an online art intro class i registered myself in recently:

and this is the artist statement that i made to go with it:

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In this artwork, I have stayed within my relatively familiar means – graphite pencil and watercolor. Although I am still apparently a beginner in watercolor, I thought I will be more comfortable using it (compared to making collage) as long as my pencils are done right. I played with perspective here, something I have learned reading Andrew Loomis’ book and I’m quite happy with how I placed the shapes around each other. For the coloring, I used a cool green to denote stillness and hopefully, a hint of mystery, then gradually added black to make different values of it. I intended to make this a supposedly dark painting because this was based on my frequent and consistent nightmare as a kid. I excluded curvy shapes here so that the sharp edges of the shapes prevail.

I have decided from day 1 that I will do something based on my childhood dreams, and nightmares. And of the most frequent nightmares I would have is falling from the sky into thousands of sharp towers or very sharp stalagmites which will cut me through. I wanted to express my fear for sharp objects and the terror of falling into one. This fear of mine probably started when brutal rape stories were always on the news back in the days. Luckily I was never a victim, but based from what I hear from TV or the radio, I became very defensive and protective of myself. While conceptualizing and creating this artwork, even to the typing of this statement, I could still smell my fear.

I chose this image because I would like to once again face the fear to overcome it. And I would want to finally tell myself that as long as I stay away from situations that may lead to such horrible experiences that was presented to me through TV, and movies, ect., I will be safe. I am hoping that my audience will sense the fear in those sharp objects and the dark, piercing, gloomy towers in my artwork. This artwork will be called Pierce.

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there you go. 'happy to add something here today.

tatah!