Mixed Media
This profound mixed media artwork, titled "Grew Up To Be," serves as a vulnerable and deeply reflective exploration of generational cycles, identity, and the heavy psychological weight of our upbringing. Conceived as the first installment of a two-part diptych—meticulously paired with its upcoming counterpart, "Just Like Mommy"—this painting addresses the sobering reality of how individuals can inadvertently become the very things they spent their entire lives trying to escape. Dedicated to those who had to navigate the world with negative role models, the piece captures that quiet, devastating slip into old family patterns, shedding light on how easily people can fall headlong into familiar traps entirely oblivious to the fact that history is repeating itself.
The stark visual dichotomy of the piece beautifully mirrors this internal struggle, as seen in "Grew Up To Be". The right side of the composition features an expansive, heavily textured field of white and silver gesso, acting as a clean slate that symbolizes a conscious desire for detachment and a new beginning. Suspended within this vast, quiet space is the delicate, hand-written title "grew up to be," floating like an unanswered question. However, this desire for a clean break is aggressively disrupted on the left by a dense, chaotic silhouette of layered memories and fractured identity. Erupting with vibrant teals, organic greens, deep blues, and raw bursts of orange paint, this complex collage section contains fragmented cursive text that reads like old mental scripts and family ghosts refusal to stay buried.
A particularly powerful anchor within this chaotic mass is a jagged, vertical shard of raw, ribbed cardboard—a deliberate choice of recycled material that injects a rough, unrefined texture into the composition. This element, combined with smaller islands of collaged script drifting into the negative space, acts as a visual metaphor for the inevitable bleeding of a difficult childhood into adulthood. The loose words embedded within the layers hint at a personal mythology that is actively being wrestled with. Ultimately, "Grew Up To Be" stands as a visually arresting and emotionally heavy work, offering a raw, unmediated mirror to the patterns that bind us and setting a hauntingly beautiful foundation for the next chapter of the story.
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