Concentration Essay

When I started the concentration I knew that all I really want to do is a series of portraits of the kids that I met during my summer job, at the Esperanza School of Hope. I was absolutely confounded by the resilience of youth, the girls were all innocent and cheerful, but each had their own troubled stories. I would have liked to learn everything about these girls, learn their stories better, but I could not. I love portraits because they give me a chance to discover the subtle hints in their countenance, but for whatever reason in these portraits I felt compelled to tell a story. I thought of it as an opportunity for me to get to know the girls and imbue onto them my hopes for their lives. However, when I started on Raissa's portrait, I realized that it was not appropriate for me to give them a charge that is not theirs. Raissa was one of my favorite girls there, and while still, I did not know much about her life, I knew that she was very important to me and I could not bring myself to put something on her that wasnt hers. That is when I decided that the portraits needed to be more about the girl and less about the girls life. While they each have their own stories I'm sure, I now realize that it is oppressive to try and do anything else beside portray a girl.
I would like my drawings to be about childhood. I just want to show the incredible resilience of children. At first glance I want my portraits to be the epitome of happy childhood but I also want to tell the kid’s stories, actual stories, or ones I dream up for them. I will do this by exploiting composition, background, and negative space and blend the line between what is “hoped” or “imagined’ and what is real. I have pictures of these girls from when I worked with them and I am planning on doing studies of various media resources to adjust body language and such. Most of the pictures I took are from a straight on angle, but I think I will change that with the studies. I want to use creative materials that remind people of childhood. I want to use things like crayons and shoe-laces on top of the normal oil paint and watercolor. While I want my work to vary, I want to have fairly big pieces. The lives of these children are no small thing.