Surprise: To me, surprise is a sudden outburst of happy energy

Amazement: I get easily amazed with detailed artworks. Hence, I wanted the print to be filled with tiny details to give a bigger print making pattern.

Desire: Growing up, we have often desire for our parents acceptance in things we do. Hence, these makings are actually created with (part of) my parents’ signature. When I start to mature and start to nurture a sense of independence, this desire gradually wears off, resulting in a lower density at the end of the line.

Despair: This is pretty self-explanatory. The dripping ink are visually representative of tears of despair. I tried to varied the direction of the drips in order to portray the irrational feeling of despair.

Isolation: This pattern is referencing to one of my favourite artist – Edward Hopper, who explores the them of isolation in NYC. He often uses window frames and door frames to depict isolation. Using the same visual motif, I created this pattern by interweaving unevenly cut strips into the black paper.

Joy: …it’s the simplest form of gratitude. As simple as the word itself, this pattern was created with forms taken from my happy drawing. They seem like happy creatures in a happy land!

Zest: …is great enthusiasm and energy. This word stood out among the list of ‘happy emotions’ because it is repeatedly used in my secondary school’s song. My secondary school days were (and will always be) one of the greatest part of my life. Everyday were energetic and spend with great enthusiasm. Hence, I wanted to encompass the energy of zest within my pattern.

Euphoria: To me euphoria is mystical happiness we feel that cannot be easily conveyed with words. It just all seems magical. Hence, I decided to use create swirly prints which black and white paint interweaves one another.

Tenderness: This white strip is actually filled with embossed swirly lines that resemble enlarged fingerprints. I wanted to engage the sense of touch in this emotion line because tenderness often compel us to touch it more than merely seeing it.

Sentimentality: This project itself has been pretty sentimental as it asks us to dig through our deepest feelings. For me,  feelings are transient and I don’t really like to express them much. Hence, while experiencing sentimentality, there is also uncertainty within it.

Anxiety: When I do get anxious, I get jittery and loses focus easily. A million random thoughts would fill my mind and my thoughts would start to get wild.

Horror: I hate horror shows as they feed wild thoughts to my mind especially when I’m alone at night. An imaginary creature seem to be lurking around me. Hence, the use of white nail polish in water creates these ghostly effects. If you look close enough, you could see some ghost in there 😛

Hysteria: Hysteria is a stronger sense of fear as compared to anxiety. Hence, while strokes are largely in the same direction, they are bolder and vary in thickness to make it seem more dynamic. 

Nervousness: Embarrassingly enough, I get sweaty palms when I’m nervous. The wet splodges reflects the sweaty palm prints I could possibly make when I’m extremely nervous. This print was made with wet paper tissue dipped with diluted black Chinese ink on newsprint.

Fury: I do experience this when my frustrations had reached its limit. And yes, I do get violent in order to vent that energy out of me. Hence, I worked closely with the definition of the word ‘violent anger’ to create the line. The jagged edges of the torn paper are symbolic of violence and the juxtaposition of the complexity of mark making against the solid black paint seems to represent a disruption of tranquility.

Torment: Torment would infer that lots of physical violence had been done. My paper had been ‘tormented’ with burns, tears and crushes. In order to emphasise ‘torment’, I added my body prints (in this case my hand print). This was reference from Performance Artist, Marina Abramovic, who often carry out physical torture on her body and show our human body to be vulnerable against such harms.

 

 

Frustration: I don’t like to verbalise my emotions and often bottle up my frustrations. Hence, I feel that frustration is a more subtle form of anger where it is hidden beneath the facade and only revealed when triggered. With this explanation, I created a pull-out-to-trigger-frustration-strip. Upon pulling out the right tab at the end, the soft strokes changes to reveal the harsh mark makings beneath it.

 

And yayyyy!!! Work is done!!!