Hold on

Hold on 2009

mixed media on two wood panels

At this time I was exploring with collaging objects to my paintings, I used kite string for this painting. I remember being really stressed out around this time, school was a stressful time for me, at points. I remember I was taking 20+ units and I made this painting around midterms. I wanted to express the worries, stress, anxieties, and fears that I had.

This was a self portrait, there are three of me because they represent the different moods at one time or day. The balloons are symbols of hope for me, hope and goals. I'm constantly attached to my hopes, the things I want to achieve, and this whole idea that school was supposed to help me reach that. I wanted to use the break that comes with using two panels and incorporate that into the painting itself. So the strings were cut in the space between the two panels to suggest that the ties have been severed. That I was falling away from these hopes and goals. I gave myself really long hair to represent my longing, that constant longing for something that wasn't quite there.

I named the piece, "Hold on" because I always reminded myself that even though it seems like those goals are so far away, that what I'm trying to achieve seems like it's not even connected to me anymore,   I have to keep going, that I have to hold on somehow. So that's why the figures are trying to hold on but can only hold on to themselves. I learned that all of my goals, my hopes, all of that was up to me. Everything that I wanted to achieve was in direct relation to how much I wanted to do it, how much energy I put into it, how much I wanted to hold on to it.

Sometimes I made pieces that really helped me deal with what was going on, and most of the time I would subconsciously finish a piece and incorporate all these symbols without even knowing it until it was done or halfway through. This piece was definitely one of those that helped me recognize what was going on, and it helped me deal.