Untitled Painting

Oil on Canvas, 22"x28", 2020

Statement:

For my final painting I did a lot of thinking as to what type of portrait I was interested in painting. I knew I didn’t want to do a traditional realalistic self portrait but something that felt much more relavent with the current times and situation we are presently in. As viewing the news and social media daily I saw a sever spike in asian related hate crimes which personally struck me and I myself have noticed a small amount of interactions like these since the pandemic had begun. It was insane and intense to see people react in such a way in such a dark time, and all it truly was was racism at the core of the American life. It was quite upsetting to see that people only seemed concerned about these hate crimes if they were asian themselves and that the rest of the world had somewhat chosen to turn a blind eye. To add on to this, the murder of Ahmaud Arbery and countless other black hate crimes have blasted all over social media making a major present demanding change. This in combination with the asian hate crimes and the constant abuse the Latin community gets from the president on the daily really pushed me to an idea of a portrait that somewhat represented the hate and abuse present in America when it comes to race. I went the route of an abstract painting to really leave it open to the viewer to see what they wanted to see but essentially in short made 3 small boxes to really place these races in “boxes” that they’re so often characterized in. I painted them so it looked as if they were in engulfed by the white background to remain in their respected boxes as well as always been seen surrounded by this whiteness. Lastly I made the boxes bleed at the bottoms of each of them to really show this dying aspect from each race as more and more of that whiteness takes over and demands more space if it’s own.