SUSTAINED INVESTIGATION 2024 - 2025
perception & identity: what we interpret and what we portray
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Beads & Bracelets
Acrylic on Mixed Media Paper
September, 2024
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Since my sustained investigation is about the ways we represent ourselves or the little things that we use to identify others, I wanted to touch on creativity. The point of this piece is to show that we use what we create to identify us, which is why I chose to not show faces and just show the hands and the bracelets. I wanted to experiment with reflective material and how it reflects light through the beads. I honestly really enjoyed painting the beads and the bead container because I had to figure out reflective and translucent material.
Infantile Amnesia
Oil on Canvas
October, 2024
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This piece is an oil painting I made using a photo of my dad holding me when I was a baby. I picked this picture because I think it is interesting how we, and other people, identify and connect with our younger selves, even if we barely remember being them. It was funny because my dad saw this painting and actually said it made him think of how he knew that version of me better than I did. I also see this theme a lot when I am talking to someone who only knew me when I was a kid. They say things like “I remember when you were this tall” or comment on how grownup I look.
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Mitsy the Bishi
Digital Using Procreate
October, 2024
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Another way thing people identify themselves is with the car they own or drive. I notice this a lot as a teenager. Cars are often used as your own space. You play your music, you decorate it, you spend time driving it. This also goes for other people because I know which cars my friends drive. I used my own car as a reference because I have a similar connection to it. I don't really decorate it, but I do spend a lot of time driving or sitting in it. Being able to drive is often a major milestone because it can give someone a lot of freedom.
4:30 PM at the Lake
Gouache on Mixed Media Paper
November, 2024
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This piece is meant to feel like you are seeing someone on a small boat on the lake. I go to lake lake often in the summer so I was always find myself looking over and trying to guess stuff about the other people there. This was from a picture that I took by the lake near my house. In the photo is a man, woman, and dog, and it just feels like a really peaceful moment.
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Curation
Acrylic on Mixed Media Paper
Decembet, 2024
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I wanted to show how people represent themselves through what they curate, specifically in reference to a certain taste of media. I chose to paint a concert for this because going to a concert is associating yourself with an artist's music. This is even more emphasized by people taking videos and photos at concerts. I think people do this as a way of proving they were there, they later show these videos to others to highlight how that music and that experience is a part of them.
Pseudoisochromatic
Digital Using Procreate
December, 2024
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For this piece I wanted to portray themes such as self perception and individual viewpoints. I took inspiration from color blind tests for the palette because it reminds me of the idea that we all, literally, see everything differently. To emphasize this point I used contrasting styles for the same portrait. One is a more unfinished sketch and the other is a more rendered paint. I took inspiration from something I learned in my 7th grade art class, part of being an artist is deciding when the piece is done. We see this with impressionism in contrast to realism. Style is a personal preference and that includes the amount of time, paint, or detail put into a piece.
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Limit of 6 Items
Acrylic and Gouache on Mixed Media Paper
January, 2025
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This piece is meant to reflect how people use their clothes to identify themselves. I used 3 people in separate dressing rooms looking at clothes through mirrors to show this.
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A Thousand Pages (give or take a few)
Digital Using Procreate
February, 2025
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This piece is meant to display elements of my sustained investigation through two ideas. One is showing the girl in the store, she isn't paying attention to us and we are seeing her in a public environment. This is how we form a lot of impressions about people. The second is the focus on books. I think it is important to who we are what we read because the experience of a story changes our perspective.
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Coccinellidae
Acrylic Marker and Oil Pastel
February, 2025
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This piece is about how we treat what we find beautiful. To portray this I drew someone holding a ladybug in oil pastel. This is meant to show how we give things we find beautiful attention. The shirt of the person holding the ladybug is red, this is meant to portray how we also end up impersonating what we admire.
Pygmalion Effect
Digital Using Procreate
February, 2025
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This piece was inspired by the pygmalion effect. It is the idea that the way we present ourselves determines how we are positively or negatively perceived, which determines how we think and present ourselves. It is a cycle of outward feedback, internal opinion, and personal presentation. To demonstrate this I used makeup because a lot of people have varying relationships with the use of makeup. Some people use makeup because it helps them feel confident, and other people don’t feel confident unless they are wearing makeup. It also can affect the way that people treat them, even if it is not on purpose.
Next Stop
Oil Paint on Canvas
March, 2025
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This piece is of a picture that I took while on a bus in Miami. I love moments like this because they really make you think about the different lives around you. When you are traveling you are around so many strangers. On vacation you see so many people that you will likely never see again. It is interesting how we only get 30 seconds of them in our lives and we are still trying to form some kind of understanding of them.
Crowd Complex
Collage & Mixed Media on Mixed Media Paper
April, 2025
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My Sustained Investigation is based around outside perception for an individual, so for this piece I chose to crowd the page with collage. I wanted to make it look like a “Where's Waldo” book because in those books you always look at the different people on the page. While you do this you notice specific things about them (short or tall, boy or girl, light hair or dark hair) and then you move on. This is meant to convey that split second perception of people in a crowd. This was my first time using collage for a piece and I really enjoyed the layering involved in the process of combining different mediums.
RBF
Digital Using Procreate
April, 2025
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Since my sustained is focused on external view and interpretation of someone else's internal state, I chose to focus on an aspect that can lead to misunderstanding, specifically the term RBF. It refers to the resting face of someone making them appear judgemental or unapproachable while in reality they are just focused. I chose to represent this through two statues of women and a real woman looking at them. Because this misinterpretation of character is most often associated with women (even the middle initial is a term that could be considered derogatory towards women) I chose to make the piece very feminine. I chose light, feminine colors with a red for some of the background details.
Genuine Language
Acrylic and Collage on Wood
May, 2025
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A lot of who we are is what we say. There is so much to be taken into account when it comes to the use of language. In this piece the person is typing out the quote, “I say a lot, but what do I mean?” I meant for this to have two interpretations. One is the actual meaning of what we say and how we meant it versus how someone else interprets it. The other is whether or not we are being honest or genuine to our thoughts with what we say. I meant for this piece to be very heavy on thought and interpretation because that is a lot of what language is.
