Unit 4 - Text in Art | artist-portfolio

Unit 4 - Text in Art

"Dear Diary,

I'm scared. I think that I'm scared to develop a new crush. I never had this much trouble before. I know that when I fall, I tend to fall fast and hard, but right now, that's what I'm afraid of. What if he doesn't like me back? That was a question that I know I have always asked myself before, but it has never stoped me before.

It's funny to think how much things have changed in over a year. Almost a year and a half ago, I had a full out crush and we were flirty, easy converstations flowed out of us almost every day. I was so happy. Then he asked me out and obviously I tried to play it cool. But I mean come one, that was my first time being properly asked out. I was freaking excited. Then all of a sudden, he just stopped talking to me and ignored me for months. I'm not going to like, that hurt, probably more than if we were dating and he actually broke up with me. I'm pretty much over it, or at least I thought that I had fully moved on from that. But recently, I just realised that the experience hasn't fully left me. Here I am, stuck with all my insecurities. I didn't actually know how much damage was left in me until now. I'm scared that no one would love me back. Like actually scared to the point of being afraid to have a crush. What about me made him leave, ignore me. What did I do wrong? Or was I just too stupid and I just made all of this up in my head? Was I stupid to think a guy like him could ever like someone like me, my quiet careful personality rather than the confident and social girl who everyone seems to love.

Will I ever find love? Or does no one want to be with me. What is it about me that made him leave? I really don't know what to do. I guess I probably shouldn't be afraid, that I should just keep caring and to keep going with life...

I just don't know what to do. I don't want to get rejected again, but I am still the hopeless romantic girl who wants to find love and be good enough.

Honestly, I have no idea where I am going with this. I just felt the need to talk through what I was feeling. I'm torn...I don't know what I should do. I really wish that I didn't feel so insecure about this.

Love

Natalie

Dear Diary

Paper

93cm x 120cm

January 2016

Dear Diary is a very personal piece of work, done with the paper cut technique, inspired by artist Annie Vought. The written text is an entry from my personal diary that shows the insecurities and emotions that I have felt before. This piece was designed also with a silhouette of a girl thinking into the distance within the text showing how hidden her emotion was until she was writing on paper. The piece shows the audience they are not alone with their emotions.

This is another piece that took a lot of time and effort to complete. Although I had brainstormed three ways of incorporating text into my art piece, one clearly stood out to me which is the piece that I ended up choosing. I had been inspired by Annie Vought, in the way that she cut out letters that she has received out of black paper. I wanted to do a similar idea, however instead of using a letter, I decided to carve out one of my diary entries about self doubt. I had rewritten my diary entry in an A4 format so it would all fit onto one piece of paper, then I scanned to page and blew it up in scale so that the text would be the actual size that it would be for my piece. I used pieces of tracing paper in order to trace my text and transfer it onto the large piece of black paper that I had already sized. With the transfer, I was able to see the faint pencil lines, so I could go in with a craft knife free hand. I didn't mind if my lines were not particularly straight or if my lines were of different thickness as handwriting is not always perfect. For my original idea, I had the diary in paper cut, then the silhouette of the girl done using a collage of cut up text from books glued onto a foam board, then added on top of the paper cut. However after speaking to my teachers, they felt as if it would distract everyone from the piece, as well as there being an issue of framing. I ended up deciding to leave an outline of the silhouette at the bottom of my piece with my diary entry still going through the silhouette so that it would take people a second glance in order to be able to actually see the silhouette out of the text.