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Description
In 2022, exactly one year to the day of my father's passing, I was diagnosed with bi-polar II. I was relieved of course to finally have an answer to my struggles, but also incredibly frustrated and angry that it took this long to come to this medical conclusion. At first, I stayed fairly reserved as it pertained to my illness. I didn't disclose it to anyone outside of close friends and family and I tried everything in my power to control it. But the thing about bi-polar is that it's not something to control--it's an illness that forces you to understand. Once I understood, I wanted others to understand as well--and thus, from the depths of my own mania, I created this; a visual representation of how my special blend of mania feels.

Funnily enough, this piece also taught me that there is, in fact, a wrong side of a canvas sheet to paint on--I fought against this piece SO LONG just trying to get even applications of color. The original has a lot of piles of acrylic where you could see me trying to jam in as much opacity as possible but the paint would just sit on top of the canvas sheet instead of soaking in. Leading up to the finished piece, I suffered a really bad burn out following and couldn't paint for at least a month.

I'll come back to edit in specifics, but this piece won me an international award and also received honorable mentions from an art institute in Houston, TX.

Materials:
-Golden Open acrylic paint
-Canvas sheet
-POSCA Acrylic Paint Pens

Description
In 2022, exactly one year to the day of my father's passing, I was diagnosed with bi-polar II. I was relieved of course to finally have an answer to my struggles, but also incredibly frustrated and angry that it took this long to come to this medical conclusion. At first, I stayed fairly reserved as it pertained to my illness. I didn't disclose it to anyone outside of close friends and family and I tried everything in my power to control it. But the thing about bi-polar is that it's not something to control--it's an illness that forces you to understand. Once I understood, I wanted others to understand as well--and thus, from the depths of my own mania, I created this; a visual representation of how my special blend of mania feels.

Funnily enough, this piece also taught me that there is, in fact, a wrong side of a canvas sheet to paint on--I fought against this piece SO LONG just trying to get even applications of color. The original has a lot of piles of acrylic where you could see me trying to jam in as much opacity as possible but the paint would just sit on top of the canvas sheet instead of soaking in. Leading up to the finished piece, I suffered a really bad burn out following and couldn't paint for at least a month.

I'll come back to edit in specifics, but this piece won me an international award and also received honorable mentions from an art institute in Houston, TX.

Materials:
-Golden Open acrylic paint
-Canvas sheet
-POSCA Acrylic Paint Pens