The Grass Isn’t Always Greener

This piece was submitted by Nyonyose Varmah (‘23).

In regards to her work, she writes, “In my art piece The Grass Isn’t Always Greener, I wanted to display how even though people can smile and seem like a happy person on the outside they can be dealing with a lot of things internally; such as depression, anxiety, hurt, etc. The way that I wanted to communicate this piece to onlookers was to show an aspect of myself by revealing parts that I hide from others, even myself, by pushing it aside or forcing myself to forget about it and move on. In my piece The Grass Isn’t Always Greener, I wanted there to be movement in black and white showing confusion within my own head and my feelings, but bright color that emphasises portions of the piece to show the person that I reveal to the world. The main face and flowers were drawn with a charcoal medium in black because I wanted to convey despair, but then there is a portion of the face that I drew a second figure on top. A portion of the figure is drawn in white  when paired with black is a symbol of eternal struggle between night and day. This figure, which is drawing using mark making such as stippling and cross hatching, is reaching out towards a mirror trying to grab a piece of themselves that is drifting away. Lastly, I painted over portions of the art piece streaks of green grass which symbolizes growth and renewal. I was inspired to do this by the artist David Ambarzumjan who uses one bold stroke to show different sides of a story. Using green in this piece was one of the main problems that I experienced because it was not my exact intention and it made me nervous, but that was something that I had to quickly overcome and work my way through. What I took away from this unit was learning how to create depth and value in my piece.”