Ava's Final Project

For my final project, I decided to paint two canvasses of myself inspired by Vincent Van Gogh. Vincent Van Gogh has always stood out to me from many different artists because of his life story. Van Gogh struggled with depression and often suffered manic episodes and delusions. He was put into a mental asylum where he was receiving treatment for his mental health. Van Gogh had a difficult time finding his own painting styles and his own personal looks for his work. Once his mental health started to decline, he used it to his advantage in his art work and used any hallucinations and mental battles into his work. This is when he gained his own methods of art. Van Gogh also experienced traumatic events as he cut his own ear off during an altercation and committing suicide. Although most people admire his popular works, such as A Starry Night, he did not gain a lot of recognition and respect. It wasn't till after his death, that he received the attention he deserved for his work. 

  There are similar themes in Van Gogh's life story and with different articles we read in class. Many artists suffered from mental health issues and felt that they had to live up to a certain standard of society. We learned as a class about many different artists who wanted to break beauty standards and create work they truly wanted to, such as Frida Khalo. This made me feel as though Vincent Van Gogh could be a great addition to the themes and topics we have studied in class because he also took a great amount of time to find his own style because he was trying to have similar art styles as other artists.

I am definitely not an artist but tried my best to paint a Van Gogh inspired portrait of myself. Van Gogh painted with oil paints but I decided not to. The first one I created was the bottom one but I was not pleased with the outcome so I decided to include both portraits. I sketched a portrait of myself on both canvasses and painted them with the swirly patterns Van Gogh used. The bottom picture involved a lot of swirls and brighter colors. I tried to copy more of Van Gogh's picture in the top picture. Van Gogh is seen wearing a blue top with an opening in the middle along with the blue background, which I tried to re-create in my portrait with different shades of green. His work hardly shows plain, solid colors and there is normally streaks and multiple colors overlapping. This is what I wanted to keep alive in my work as well.