Healing Networks

Abstract

For my senior project, I illustrated and painted feelings and ideas I found most important in my personal journey of healing. I experimented with surface, texture, mediums, and color to bring about a body of work that I've named "Healing Networks". My research for this series took me along several paths -- where I noticed many ideas between the body, nature, and healing intersected. With this project, I not only wanted to heal from my experiences -- learn, and grow from them -- I also wanted to show the viewers of these pieces that in many ways our struggles, thoughts, and feelings are a shared, collective experience. In looking into the past and studying the rituals and traditions of the Tainos and Cuban Santeria, I learned that many of these ideas about connecting to each other and nature can be very powerful tools in empowering the self. I borrowed several books from the library, studying the processes and ideas of American Modernist painters, with the hope of carrying their influence into my studio. It was through these little adventures I had when reading about Ana Mendieta, Georgia O'Keeffe, and Charles Burchfield that I found an urgency within myself to relay the simultaneous beauty and tragedy of the human experience.