Me at 40!

At 40 I will probably look a lot like my mom but have personality traits that are much more like those of my grandmother.

When I am forty, I will have a family and live in a city up North. I will own my own Interior Decorating business but since it will already be well established, I will take a lot of time away from it to be there for my family. Creating contemporary artwork will be my personal escape from pleasing customers at work and my family at home. It will be my chance to do what I want and address issues that I feel are important in the way that I want to.

My latest project will be responding to the issues that pollution continues to pose to our environment, and figuratively, how moral pollution affects children and others living in the modern society. Not only is the environment in danger due to the carelessness of many humans, but the way in which children grow up is so affected by the media and the Hollywood image. Television, movies and music are exposing kids to more and more stereotypes and vulgar habits everyday that cause children to grow up too fast and get involved in bad things at an increasingly young age. My artwork will bring these issues to life in the form of a painting/drawing.

Statement About Work:

As a parent, I have faced so many issues on what is the best way to raise a child in today’s world. Today you cannot just walk down the street without feeling insecurity at one time or another. The inspiration for my artwork comes from the questions that I pose to myself as a parent about how much of the cruel world I want my child to see and when is it crossing the line of being too sheltering. What shows should I allow my 10 year old to watch? Should I drop her off to a friend’s house for a birthday party and trust that the other child’s parents will keep a close eye on them? How do I respond when she asks me about topics that are ahead of her time that the kids in school were talking about? All of these issues are confronted in my artwork. I have concluded that when a child is born they are like a river that is pure and has not yet been discovered by man, but as the child grows and the river flows they are tainted by pollution. The things they hear at school, they see on TV and the songs they listen to all affect their personality and shape their moral beliefs. In my artwork I have created an abstract representation of pollution flowing into a river. The colors are intense, reflecting the severity of the issue at hand. Flowing through the work, strains of a disease are drawn in to reflect the harm done when a child is exposed to this type of moral pollution. This work is timeless because the issues of raising a child have and always will be present as long as parents are raising children.

Letter to the Editor:

I have read the awful review that I have received from your magazine about my work. I feel that you did not fully understand the meanings behind my work when you said that it was not trendy. The work is not to be taken literally as it is seen at first glance, such an acclaimed critic as yourself should know that in all artwork there is typically a deeper meaning. The work is not simply about water pollution, a topic that as you stated is “trite and boring.” I feel that you should be enlightened as to what the artwork represents on a deeper level. The artwork represents the degradation of a society through the loss of morals and because it has become popular to place momentary happiness before lifelong happiness. I wanted the work to resemble something familiar so that all viewers could connect with it on some level, but it also leaves plenty of room for speculation. These are issues that all people in a modern society should come face to face with and evaluate where they stand, and my artwork forces you to do just that. As far as the price goes, a painting without a deep meaning and thought process should not be priced as highly as my work, however my painting is the opposite of empty when it comes to symbolism and meaning. My work takes an issue that everyone can relate to and is priced moderately as well considering the immense amount of time and effort I placed into it. I feel that in saying my painting is worthless you made a judgment out of frustration that you did not understand the message in the work. I hope that you now understand better where my thoughts were in creating this work, and maybe next time you will think a little deeper about the different ways that a somewhat literal representation can be interpreted.
Sincerely,
Ashley Harris