Day 66: Vaguely Immoral

While I’ve always enjoyed making mixed media art, I was a bit surprised at the amount of people who commented to me that they liked yesterday’s piece. I always see abstracts in movies in the backgrounds of mansions, but I don’t usually see them in people’s homes that I know. It’s always a crapshoot when it comes to abstract work I do- even if I know that I like it, I have no idea what other people will think.

I didn’t understand abstract art when I was a teenager. I was still working on all the basics- perspective lines, value scales, color wheels- and I had a shallow perspective about abstract art. I thought that abstracts didn’t require much skill, and now I think I resented the freedom of abstract artists because I was stuck doing those exercises, hating still life practices with every fiber of my being.

I talked to my aunt Kasey today, who is an amazing person, storyteller (I illustrated this children’s book she wrote) and teacher. She told me that she was really inspired by my project and we discussed a lesson plan she’s working on with her students where she’s asking them to create a piece of art to illustrate the concept of racial injustice, as they are currently reading the classic book To Kill A Mockingbird.

I had planned to do another mixed media mini-painting today, so I used that theme as a jumping off point and ended up with “Vaguely Immoral”, a companion piece to yesterday’s painting. Including a poem I wrote that I found in an old sketchbook, another dictionary page, and a snippet from the title page of a Social Security booklet I once received, I find that this style of painting feels so natural to me because it mimics my mile-a-minute mind, where thoughts I didn’t even ask for flood in and shove shoulders with other ones so quickly, sometimes all I can do is watch and try to grab them.