BLOG: Sustained Investigation #2 Progress

What idea is guiding this work?

For this piece, I decided to center it around grooming - when an older individual takes advantage of a young, impressionable child. This is most common when younger people have unsupervised and early access to the internet - allowing for them to meet dangerous people online. Because of how young they are, they latch onto these figures as pillars of support easily and don’t realize the long term harm.

• How are you practicing, experimenting or revising aspects of this work? (you can pick one)

I am experimenting and practicing aspects of this work by working out the perspective I want the groomer and victim to be interacting with each other, and how I want to illustrate the mold abstract art. I put down multiple thumbnails and ideas in my sketchbook of how I could show the “intimate” embrace. One idea I had was to make a portrait of both the victim and the groomer, and connect them by internet wires because I wanted to emphasize the psychedelic, abstract mold art on the victim. I felt that the embrace would’ve covered it - however I am still trying to work out a perspective that best effectively shows the rawness and vulnerability of this relationship.

• How can your choices of materials or processes relate to your idea?

In order to create the lack of control and the amount of flow that are in my inspiration pictures -  I wanted to try watercolor since it is a medium I am not as familiar with. Watercolor can produce uncontrolled but flowy results - which I want to emulate in my piece as I want to demonstrate the lack of control that can spiral in the child. The groomer will be a solid, stable black while the child is illustrated through mold and paint to show how the groomer is a “foundation” for the child - forming codependency. My unconventional material is internet wires, which I will use to show the messy but extremely intertwined relationship between the groomer and the victim. They represent how difficult it is to get out of this sort of dynamic and how the effects persist over time. For my processes, instead of meticulous I usually am with my detail and rendering - I want to actually instead be as uncontrolled as possible. I want to let the paint flow where it wants to, and let the processes decide for themselves the result. This is because I want to emphasize the cellular, abstract-like structures. Additionally, it is to imitate the mind of the child in their lack of control.