Love Child: Not Just a Black Girl

Love Child: Not Just a Black Girl

This project is called “Love Child”. It is based on a spiritual journey about myself which revolves around my most sacred part, which is my heart. As the earth spins, and as I do the same, we (the Earth and I) bond in this matronomy of existence so that she may teach me about myself and I, in turn, will reciprocate it to others.

  

Love Child, that is what my name means.  It  has become something I toil with, like a divine romance between the mental, physical, emotional and spiritual planes. Along this toil, I began to see, that it is in my transparency that allows me the freedom to be the most vulnerable. This vulnerability came with exposing great weakness and great strength, often times simultaneously. It was in those pivotal moments that I learned that I had to allow myself to be visible and to stop hiding. I began expressing these emotions in art, often using black, which is how my soul often felt while searching for answers.

These moments made me believe that I begun to be tested by God, people and the universe. To live up to my name, I would undergo ultimate test that would try my faith, hope, endurance, but especially what I was able to forgive- which are all components of love. I began to be placed in situations that required me to love others beyond normal capacity but most importantly, love myself this much as well.

Along this journey, I began to see the levels on which love existed and began to write vigorously about this journey in diaries and journals. I began to see the lines on a sheet of paper as my escape and my only friend, worthy to hold my entire heart without restraint. Thus, I incorporated this visual theory of line art into most of my work. It is a representation of the many levels of love, especially self love, which is going up and going down;. continuously building while continuously destroying.

These lines became a way to express the fluidity, the variability and the complexity of growth. It became my help in understanding that I too live on this line, this timeline, on this lifeline, which is a continuum of dots or periods; a reminder to self to always stop to smell the roses and then continuing, when I get tired, to stop and smell the next.

For this self portrait, I chose 6 works of art,

1. The number 6 represents the limitations of man, which acts as a reminder to go beyond my own limitations.

Each represents:

1. Gold- produced by pressure, found in darkness

2. Tears of Joy- that which the world sees

3. Tears of Pain- that which no one sees

4. Intimacy with self

5 . 5a: Relationship status (complicated)

5b: Relationship status (entertwined with coworkers, friends, etc) 2. I chose black, the main color to represent the feeling of ambiguity and uncertainty that I often feel.

I chose white to represent the feeling of serenity in that ambiguity during that uncertainty, but also clarity, purity and integrity.