Original artwork description:

Everyone probably agrees that there’s a rise in mental disorders alongside technology. Every now and then I meet someone who brandishes their diagnosis collection like medals, then go a step further and tell me what I am… Plot twist, I’m nothing, I’m a perfectly healthy young woman and that opinion needs to step right back to where it came from, it’s inappropriate behaviour. What I’ve understood so far… These people are using articles that show up on their first page of a, potentially bias, Google search which include phrases like “13 reasons you’re”. Or YouTube videos of someone who did that for them. These aren’t thousand page studies, or books written by psychologists but more and more people walk around as if that’s what they’re equipped with. I found one of these people particularly jarring when they had to be correct, so I questioned it and ended up with this artwork.

I began painting this artwork as a man then it ended up being a woman because of paint logistics (check out the video on that one), but the concept overall was to paint books as eye lasers. As if the person who’s shooting out diagnosis’ is using their new found opinion as lasers out to get you. I painted the lasers as books since there’s no actual books going on here. If I were being socially confronted with someone who read studies I’d have taken a different approach and painted someone throwing books, so that’s where the laser books idea comes from, empty, like the weight of the opinions being thrown at me. Underneath I left the ground bare from grass since it really felt like these interactions needed to leave the person correct at all costs, no friendship will be left behind if they’re wrong, no life for anything new to grow. I also tried painting the head as a huge statue in the distance being held up by the tree, I’m not sure I hit the mark though.

This artwork is one of my hand-stretched ones, sold with hooks ready to hang and a certificate of authenticity.

Materials used:

Water soluble oils

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