This painting is the result of my first year project on the body within which i eventually chose to look at my brother as the focus of the whole project. My brother suffers from a high degree of autism and is unable to properly communicate with the world around and with the people that surround him. It is imposible to say how much he fully understands of his environment and of his own existance as a person, and yet despite this he still has a personality and intellect that is more unique and special than any other we see from day to day.
With a mind no greater then that of a 4 year old and the body of a 22 year old you can imagine that life for those around him may be difficult and at times hard to cope with. But through all this comes from a different perspective and it came to my attention that the only perspective that matters is his and thus i decided to look at the idea of what it is that we consider normal. what is normality? who is different? how do we define this difference?
So the aim of this project was to capture not just the likenes of my brother but to also comment on the fact that to me, he is normal, he is the essence of this normality that society seems to operate around. To the viewer this is just a simple portrait of a young man, but within the painting i left simple hints such as the gaze of the eyes for example to give the impression that there is more to him then meets the eye.
Initially this was designed to be a series of paintings however due to time constraints within the project deadline they were unable to be created, but this is an ongoing project for me as an artist and plans are already in motion to continue the series of portraits as originally intended.
No comments:
Post a Comment