The frame/white background: A big theme I wanted to play with was moving from one perception to another, reality vs. perception, escaping, etc. I'm stepping out from the craziness of the frame out into the unknown. My hand and foot are faded out and the rest of the body shaded to show that my perception of myself is often defined by other people, and it's hard to break out of that and define myself. Also, I tend to have a lot of out-of-body moments where I think too much about the separation of body and soul and I have this weird, objective take on things and I feel like my life is really abstract and kind of a play...it's hard to explain the feeling.
The "black hole"/void: An ominous background force...and I have this obsession with the idea of nothingness, things being silently obliterated...yes I'm weird like that. I also over-think/obsess over the physics of phenomena in space. Space is awesome. It blows my mind.
The floating rocks: I have a fascination with mountains and floating rocks and monoliths and such. I also have this image of a person walking on a path through the sky all the time...so that's reflected here.
The vines/being tied to the rock: As anybody who has been following me/reading my journals for the last year or more, you'll know I've been going through huge transitions and transformations of how I see myself/how I interact with the world...in good ways, and bad. I've made big leaps but they've come very slowly, and I'm still weighed down by my past and emotional baggage. I also switch between being lethargic or contemplative and antisocial and active, antsy and raring to go.
The binoculars: More obvious...I like to fancy myself an explorer but I'm not really...xD I love traveling but I haven't been out of country or anything. I'd love to see the world, and I love learning about different cultures, but I can be pretty naive.
The bird: I identify really heavily with birds in general. But this bird is actually symbolic of a specific bird. My mom has been researching our genealogy and I now know I have Scottish, English, German and Welsh background. We'd known for a while about the English and German but not the other two, and I thought it sounded cool to be Welsh.xD So when I did this portrait I looked up Welsh mythology and one thing I found was called Mabon ap Modron. A hero named Culhwch, who was King Arthur's cousin, had to find a man of this name who was born of a goddess and had been trapped for many years who was the only person who could kill the Great Boar Tyrch Trwth. (He needed to kill the boar to bring to this giant guy Ysbaddaden who was the father of a beautiful girl he wanted to marry.) To find him he had to be guided by the Oldest Animals. The first animal he followed was the Blackbird of Cilgrwi. ERGO, the blackbird is in the picture because I'm looking for guidance, a sign! And I wanted to have something from my heritage in there that wasn't super obvious. So there you go, lesson in Welsh mythology. And none of those names are pronounceable, so don't try. If you want to read the full story, it's here.
Also, yay for breaking the fourth wall, haha.
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