Self Portrait

Kristel Rico
Professor Cacoilo
Arts, Culture, & Media
April 26, 2019

Artist Statement

How art became a part of my life started in my adolescent years. I found an app online where I had the opportunity to animate in middle school. I remember seeing other artists on this site that expressed their feelings and showed what they were going through. It inspired me into doing the same. I would receive feedback from others that encouraged me into making more animations although I remained anonymous. It was a great place for me because I met people who had similar interests and problems as I did. I felt I was in a community where expressing our feelings made us strong. In real life, the people I was surrounded were very different from me. So, I have always struggled with being who I am because I would try to be like my ‘friends’ at the time. As I enter high school, things have changed. In my freshman year, the app for the animation had ended. This was where I felt isolated because it was a time where I had no one to talk to and this app was something that made me feel carefree. I started to constantly draw on my assignments and notebooks, but I would never show it to anyone because I felt insecure about my artwork. I felt drawing gave me an escape route from reality. Eventually, I hit a point where I became isolated and depressed from the world. I went seeking for help and it is what got me back on my feet because I realized all my insecurities does not matter. By the time I graduated high school, I had to decide on what I was going to do as a career. In the beginning, I wanted to be an animator because it was something I have always enjoyed. I was not able to go into that field because I did not have the money for it.  Going into college, I chose ‘Visual Arts’ as my major because I knew I will learn whole new experience of the arts. Such as learning painting, art history, printmaking, and many more. These would be the things that can expand my knowledge into knowing about the art world. Ever since I started to realize the meaning behind paintings I do currently, it brings me a lot of motivation to keep doing what I am doing now. The paintings I do now, is a reflection of my past life. In one of the readings I chosen an article that I felt related towards my adolescent years titled, “Erik Erickson’s Stages of Psychosocial Development”, written by Saul McLeod. It talks about Erik’s theory on the psychosocial crisis stages through different period in childhood and adulthood. There is a statement from the stage ‘Identity vs. Role Confusion’, it claims, “Children are becoming more independent, and begin to look at the future in terms of career, relationships, families, housing, etc. The individual wants to belong to a society and fit in. “ (Erikson, 245).  When I was doing art I wanted to keep going in that route but at the same time I tried to make friends to fit in society and I stopped doing art which led me into my dark time in my past.