Teacher Name: Gabriel Mejia
Dimensions: 18×14″
Medium: Chalk Pastel
Artist Statement: My work focuses on how the brain reacts to certain situations that occur in life. Your body can react by sweating, crying, facial expressions and movement, but how can we visually see what occurs in your mind in these moments? Ever since I began my adolescence, I was never able to describe how I felt, or how I reacted to situations. Some of those situations would be anxiety attacks, the loss of a loved one, dealing with toxic relationships, and so on. Now, some of those thought processes that I was never able to explain, I show in my work visually. Feeling the comfort of picking up a pen and doing line work, or creating smooth strokes with a paint brush inspired me to create more art each day. I work with all kinds of media: oil pastels, acrylic paint, graphite, charcoal, chalk pastels, mixed media, and watercolor. I don’t have a specific artistic process that I use whenever I begin a new piece. I either create a sketch out of boredom than it evolves into a more finer piece, or I sketch out a few ideas that I have, inspired by questions that I think about frequently. Those questions came from the thought processes that I have.