2014 Artwork from Advanced Drawing (my last semester at college)

"My Way" series 2014 oil on gessoed magazine covers

*for the final assignment, I wanted to try something different. Since I was on an even more strict budget, I had to improvise. If an artist can create art on any surface, then I wanted to re-create old magazine covers (11). It's brilliant because not only, I think, no one at Towson has ever thought of this idea but also it makes my style of art more universal. But also the icing on the cake was that while I was researching Beatriz Milhazes, when I was taking a break from the project, I found out she did the same thing only she painted on Art book covers. It's ironic and mind blowing when you think about it.

"May Way" series 2014

"The Legacy of Jason Voorhees" 2014 oil on my gessoed gallery posters

*For this assignment, we were expected to recreate a known story. It could be from a known novel, book, movie or history. After I finished the Nightmare project, I wanted to expand on my idea of creating artwork of scary movie monsters. I chose Jason Voorhees because he's my favorite and I feel that he's different from the other horror movie monsters. Jason is not technically evil or demonic, he's more of a tortured, violent zombie with somewhat of a soul but the only reason he kills is one: to avenge his loving mother, who would do the whatever she could to avenge her "special" child and or protect him (Jason was special because, before he supposedly died at first, he had the condition of an enlarged heart and physical deformity); and two: he doesn't like anyone who steps foot on his territory, aka Crystal Lake. And because of what he's been through, he can never really rest or die. He's unstoppable, strong, quick and not the type of person you wanna mess with, and he gets the job done quick and easy. One of my classmates related to me about me liking Jason because, not too long ago, she had a fetish for Leather Face from "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre." Pretty cool. 

"The Dream Mistress" 2014 oil on canvas

*This assignment is Dream or Nightmare. Our task was to recreate a dream, nightmare or vision that we recently had. My dream transitioned to at least 5 different settings. The first part was me and my sister were at a night club somewhere in Baltimore. There was graffiti on the stone walls of the club and while we were hanging out I saw a close friend of mine, in real life at the time too, named Sean with another girl and he tells me: "I'm breaking up with you. I don't like you, I never did" and walked away with his arm over her shoulders. He said it so cold and stern (the small angry face in the left of the painting) that I started crying a little and screaming (more than crying) so loud that people scattered in fear. Part Two: when I turned around, the scene changed to early afternoon with me and a few other college students from Towson stranded somewhere in one the neighborhoods in Baltimore with grassy lawns and steps. The bus driver left us and we had no one to drive us back so we decided that we had to drive ourselves back to the school by bus. I was driving and while we were on our way, we came across some crazy drivers and it caused me to lose control of the wheel and I tried to hit the breaks but when I looked down there were no breaks. They disappeared. The next thing I know is that I looked up and  I tried to stop the bus by easing off gas pedal thinking that would slow it down and then the bus swerved and the bus hit the side of the tree. All of us had minor injuries but one girl suffered a broken arm. Part Three: while I took my eyes off the crowd of injured students, everything went dark blue and turned into a swamp. I turned around and saw this old cabin that was open. I walked in with caution and straight ahead I saw Jason Voorhees. It was strange because I never thought of Jason in months or saw a Friday the 13th movie. Anyway, I saw him looking at this old teddy bear he had from when he was young and then he put it down on top of this old counter top and sat down on an old trunk then looked at me. I slowly walked towards him and once I got 10 inches in front of him he reached towards me slowly and then looked down to the ground in anguish. I slowly maneuvered his chin up and kissed the top of his mask. I thought at first it was strange because I felt comfortable with him and he never raised his hand to me but in another way it felt nice. Part 4: after the kiss, I leaned up and the room turned into an old underground colonial sanctuary with a yellow light shining from the oil lanterns. Me, my mom and sisters were gypsies on the run from some evil SOB and we stopped to get some supplies and while we were getting help an old woman called me over. She said I looked so nervous and anxious that my hands were trembling. She tells me to have a seat at the table with her and she pulls out this strange hand held tool and asks for my arm. Then she uses this tool to inject some medicine into my arm. She said it's made from snake venom and it's good to help treat anxiety. It stung in the first arm as well as the second arm. The next thing I know my sister and mother were telling me to hurry up so we can get the hell out of town and they started fussing at me for talking to the old woman. I told them to back off and walked down this ally where there was nowhere else to go and then the scene switched again. Part 5: in this last scene I was inside this very classy night club having a few drinks and while I was looking around I saw the woman who was with Sean, from the first scene, flirting with another man. I maneuvered over to her and told her in a vengeful voice "I'm telling him". I leave her at the bar and she follows me trying to explain why she was here and we both ran into people on the dance floor. We couldn't get out and then it started raining inside the club and the scene ends with us both in tears. Talk about a wild dream. I tried to illustrate each scene in the dream the best I could because I couldn't afford 5 separate canvases and I still had to incorporate my style of art as well. Each symbol/image in the painting represents a part from the dream sequence.            

"Milhaze Remix" 2014 oil on canvas 9"x11"

*The first project in the class was titled "Forgery Art" and our task was to copy a painting of an artist of our choice and incorporate some of our own style, as well. I was gonna do a Van Gogh painting but once I over heard a few other students were gonna do a Van Gogh piece I decided to switch it up because I did not want my work to be judged and or graded by comparison of another student's work. Sometimes you get teachers who might do that and I didn't want to deal with anyone playing favorites or feel like I was following the crowd and not being a leader. So instead I chose another artist, who is also an inspiration to me when it comes to hybrid art, Ms. Beatriz Milhazes. I love her work because it is so colorful and abstract. Every symbol or image in all of her works compete with one another and overlap, too. It felt like an honor to copy and recreate one of her masterpieces because her work is so extreme and busy. I'm still trying to figure out how she was able to paste the different images onto the canvas (material wise) because she would paint the images on some plastic material and once it dried she was able to paste the images on and peel away the plastic. Amazing! It would be even cooler to meet her in person.