“A Year of Prismatic Light”
Part I of IV : “The Dark Inside”
In 2022, I would embark on a yearlong project with my art. Previously, I would frequently create 3-part miniseries to integrate my art into instagram’s 3-post grid as this would give me opportunities to explore a variety of different aesthetics and ideas with each series. This year however, I decided to begin a longer four-part series that would change with the seasons. This concept was vaguely inspired by The Caretaker’s “Everything At The End Of Time”. Where that musical project consisted of six parts that would gradually portray and explore the dark progression of dementia with each stage, I wanted to go with a more... “optimistic” route.
I’ve always considered my art to be very introspective and reflective of my mental health. I wanted to convey the journey of depression, acceptance and healing with this series. Each season would be a new progressive step in that journey beginning with the negative feelings associated with anxiety and depression and gradually moving to more positive feelings in the journey of healing. Each part would consist of a specific aesthetic and that would carry on until that part was complete and I would then move on to the next part of the series. Each of the four parts would consist of 18 pieces, making up a total of 72 pieces for this entire project. This project would be a personal challenge for myself to focus on a single aesthetic for a longer period of time than I'm normally used to.
To put it plainly: the series would gradually shift from dark to light in terms of aesthetics and subject matter.
The first part “The Dark Inside” would find the series at its darkest and bleakest, with the subject (whether that being the viewer or myself is up for interpretation) finding themselves at the lowest point in their mental health journey. I believe that many people go through this stage at some points in their lives and I wanted to give an interpretation of that in my own way. It may be pessimistic and even hopeless but it’s an honest reaction to being in that moment of this journey.
