Stage 3 Identify Fallbacks

This painting communicates the importance of openness to others and the ability to suspend emotional memories. The pregnant lady is rendered as white space suggesting a clean slate and the need to find trust and security in oneself. The placement of the text graphics are representative of identifying habitual behavior patterns. The linear graphic, which splits the page in half, represents the challenges resulting from learning to negotiate new environments. Lastly, the painting incorporates a positive and negative symbol to suggest the difficult decisions that lie ahead.

MyPOP (My Print on Poverty) investigates topics of social mobility and reveals the inherent contradictions between the idealized steps to prosperity and the often harsh reality of climbing the soci-economic ladder with limited resources. Going beyond merely exposing the discrepancy between resources and opportunity, the work alludes to the sense of community that families are able to create within grinding conditions of material hardship. By illustrating a labyrinth of social and political structures, the insightful series is a shrill outcry against the stereotypes of the poor and a sobering real-life perspective of moving out of the dysfunctional cycles.

Medium: The paintings are coated with a malleable texture of wax, representing changing circumstances and preservation. The use of distressed collage is integrated for the purpose of storytelling, cross cultural symbolism and to represents obstacles, barriers and erosion of resources.