Freestyle Academy proudly presents

Climb to the Light: A Junior Conceptual Project by Karen Quero (2015)

For this Conceptual Project, I explored the feeling of dread though the experience of an accident. When I randomly drew dread and the experience of an accident from the hat in English, I thought, Wow, they really wanted me to express my emotions! Dread is a feeling that I experienced twice in my life, losing two important people, but not through an accident. That word scared me. I didn’t want to make accidents or mess up on anything I did, in my life or in my art. I wanted it all to be pretty, and most importantly, to impress everyone with my work. The art above uses the medium of water colors; by using only two colors I was able to make different shades. Using blue and brown, I wanted to make the effect of lighter to darker, because I was thinking that in the surface I look happy, cheerful, and full of life; but like the pond there is something beneath that is often not seen, which the dark colors of dread and deep sight suggest I’m feeling: sad, lonely, and disconnected. Sure, there were some mistakes in my artwork, but the word accident in my statement means that it is okay if I mess up; in art, some accidents are happy!

Using Adobe Illustrator, I created a compass, a ladder, and three paths. The ladder is a tool for reaching tall things, but it can also be a danger if you fall and nobody catches you. The roots form two paths to the ladder. One is a trail full of sadness, emptiness, and negativity. The other path represents happiness, love, joy, hope, being positive, and optimism about life itself. The compass guides, giving direction so you wouldn’t get lost or sad for too long. Life is full of wandering, curiosity, interests, and understanding; yet, as children, the path is straight because everything’s easy and simple. Everything is done for you, so all you have to do it live life. As we grow up we need a compass more and more.
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