In my artwork, the subjects are the large people, who have a sickly tone in their skin, looming over a situation happening with a person, who is surrounded by the color red and clouded thoughts. Then, at the bottom of the work, the person is slapped back into reality by their dog. The dog continues to bring her to reality by giving her words of encouragement. I created the artwork by sketching out a rough draft of my idea, first. Then later on I could go to use mixed media, but my main materials were markers and colored pencils. I had to improv on some details because my markers were continuously losing their ink. The title of my art piece is called Bark. I know the title is quite odd, but allow me to explain. Ever since the pandemic hit us globally, it has been a little hard to keep calm about the situation. The things we were used to in everyday life are now wiped clean and we have to start another way of living. This includes not being able to see our friends, travel to see family, and having to stay in quarantine for God knows how long.
Then, later on, it caused us panic when the first cases of people dying from the virus came out. At least for me, my anxiety was rising because I didn’t want to be critically sick and laying in a hospital bed, unable to see anyone. Then it would feel like I am losing my mind because I have stayed in my room for so long, it mentally drains me in a way. But, I was able to keep myself under control because of my support animal, my dog, Apollo. He has been there for me whenever I have a mental breakdown or feeling any type of sadness.
One day, I decided to take something from the negative and make it into a positive, and began to improve myself. That’s where I, mostly, got the big idea from to create this artwork. Since my dog is my support animal, I thought it would be a little comedic to have him speak encouraging words to me in the artwork.