Ambivalent by Will Roberts https://padlet.com/wroberts8/tj7l7ej3ccvf surrealism en-us 2018-05-09 18:08:25 UTC 2018-10-03 01:40:00 UTC hello@padlet.com the first idea wroberts8 https://padlet.com/wroberts8/tj7l7ej3ccvf/wish/288421392 It is a certainly strange feeling when you first find the ability within yourself to feel your emotions as they come and to not be afraid of them or mask them. For the first time, we make sense of how we must feel the “bad” emotions in order to feel the “good” ones. Of course, this emotional maturity develops over time, and we have realizations that come with experiences. For example, we may even make connections between behaviors we have today and how they may have developed from past experiences. These realizations often make us feel vulnerable, and yet at the same time, freed. 

What I intend to explore in this painting, however, is the notion that sometimes this ability is revoked from us because we are confused as to what we feel and this can make us feel lost even with ourselves - the ones we are closest to. 

]]> 2018-10-03 01:06:53 UTC https://padlet.com/wroberts8/tj7l7ej3ccvf/wish/288421392 lost wroberts8 https://padlet.com/wroberts8/tj7l7ej3ccvf/wish/288423655 I felt that the single best word to come close to portraying this feeling was ambivalence. My goal from this point forward was to portray a sense and feeling of ambivalence without attempting to "fit this painting in to a box of meaning". I wanted the painting not to be allegorical, but provocative. ]]> 2018-10-03 01:24:43 UTC https://padlet.com/wroberts8/tj7l7ej3ccvf/wish/288423655 ambivalence: having mixed feelings or contradictory ideas about something or someone wroberts8 https://padlet.com/wroberts8/tj7l7ej3ccvf/wish/288425463 To portray ambivalence, I thought there was no better way to do it than through the image of a face. I felt this way because, to me, faces and our facial expressions are a very relatable thing because a lot of the things we do and how we act and our facial expressions and body language are just physical manifestation of what we do not say. Thus, I felt like I could convey a sense of ambivalence best by showing a face. 



•Goal: to portray a sense of ambivalence
•Ambivalence: having mixed feelings or contradictory ideas about something or someone

To best portray a sense of ambivalence to the viewer, I wanted to give this face no specific features or details and I wanted to leave this face almost completely empty, with only strange representations of eyes where the real eyes should be. To do this, I put three overlapping circles, each section hold a different color to represent different feelings of emotions. I did this to show that there are multiple perspectives from which to look, and yet they all seem to be intertwined and overlapping. This person portrayed in the painting, whoever he or she may be, cannot find a way to look out of just one, causing confusion and emotional stasis. 

I also portrayed this feeling of ambivalence through the vast, mysterious and unknown landscape in the back to evoke a feeling of being lost. I wanted to make this landscape seem unreal and unfamiliar, which is where I got the inspiration to do the colorful clouds. It is as if this imagery is out of a dream
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