The Mind Body Spirit Project
Artist Statment
For this collage project, I was to create three compositions that present visuals on how I view my mind, body and spirit. They are a self-portrait of sorts but instead of showing my face, they give off a more intricate and personal look into my life. I am able to show more about myself than with just a traditional self-portrait. I used internet photos and cut and edited them using Photoshop compile them all together. I wanted to create images that seemed a bit more natural and nature based. I personally love nature and I really love animals so I really wanted to incorporate them in my own symbolism. There were a lot of things I wanted to add to show different parts of my personality, but I decided that less was more. I would rather have a more readable image composition than a more cluttered collage. I also chose to incorporate historical objects like swords and crumbling castles/temples because I have a great interest in history, especially the medieval era and Arthurian legends. I originally had way more images that I wanted to include for certain symbolism but I decided to cut the number down even more. For the mind poster, I wanted to focus on how I feel like my mind is constantly buzzing like a beehive so I went with that concept and made a beehive. Growing up I always heard that saying your body is a temple so I went with that idea for the body poster. Only my body is often sick and crumbling. When I think of my soul I think about warmth and freedom because these are things I often wish for so incorporated warm orange yellow tones into the piece. The three animals symbolize the three emotions I often feel in my soul. Wild freedom (the horse), strength, endurance, protectiveness (lioness) and nostalgia and sadness (mourning dove). The Mind and Spirit concepts were more abstract and based off my own interpretations and feelings whereas the Body concept was a little more literal and matter-of-fact. I was able to quickly compile the concepts together with layer masks and using the select subject option. I also used the color balance, hue and saturation, levels, and burn/dodge tool to tweak values and colors. This project was a bit difficult at first, because it is hard to try and sum up your whole entire self in three collages. In the end though, it was very fun and satisfying to see how I view myself. Personally I think my collages are mostly accurate but people are pretty biased when talking about themselves and tend to only want to show their very best parts. I tried not to do that so much but others might think differently or maybe even interpret my images in an entirely different way.