There is a light that never goes out.

Artist Statement: This portrait was made to capture the silent complexities which an individual holds. I attribute it with phrases like the “everyman” or “average joe”, as they describe “basic” or “simple” people, but behind those labels are a lifetime of personal histories. My biggest inspiration for this piece has to be the expressive, fragmented style of Disco Elysium. The game’s use of impressionism, expressionism, and digital painting techniques created a raw, chaotic, yet deeply emotional aesthetic I became addicted to. All methods and characteristics I attempted to replicate in the traditional format with acrylic. Using unconventional color pallets, where instead of using naturalistic skin tones, the man is built with high contrast hues of green, pinks, blues, and purples. The chaotic pallet emphasizes mood and his state of mind as a sort of visual manifestation of his world. My use of rough unfinished expressive brush strokes intended to evoke a feeling of imperfection, a type of imperfection which one becomes content with.Overall, I wanted my painting to feel both loose and intentional, allowing suggestion of emotion rather than defining it. The colors bleeding and merging with one another, mirroring the way a memory and experience shape a person. The abstraction and texture invites the viewer to see beyond the portrait, and imagine the unspoken burdens and hidden histories of the man.