Throughout my two year experience in I.B. visual arts, I have grown both artistically and creatively. The course has allowed me to explore multiple art techniques dealing with my ever evolving theme. Junior year, theme simply began as “China.” I was quickly drawn to this theme because I was anticipating my trip to the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, China and wanted to learn everything I could about China. I explored many aspects of China including the people, entertainment, language, writing and colors but I was most intrigued by Chinese people. I created several portraits of various Chinese people including my portraits of the opera singer and women. The Chinese form of writing also interested me as I produced many experiments including the word shapes that led up to the creation of my work entitled Human.
At the beginning of senior year, after a brief reflection of my previous work created, I decided to change my theme to “Unity and Isolation.” In my work, my teacher peers and I observed that often in my artwork, I would often focus on an individual. This common motif that connected several of my works inspired me to further explore individuals. Then I began to wonder about where the individuals fit in society as part of the whole. I wanted to explore how people are connected together despite individuality. What makes us bond together in unity? This idea became extremely interesting to me I and I explored it through experimenting with linoleum prints. The linoleum prints allowed me to explore my theme abstractly as it was very difficult to explain verbally, I thought it would be easier to demonstrate with shapes and patterns.