As generic as it sounds, the most influential person in my life has, without a doubt, been my mother. She was a stay-at-home mother for the entirety of my childhood— not because she did not have talents and ambitions of her own, quite the opposite, actually— but because of circumstance. Shortly after my birth, she was rendered disabled in a workplace accident that could have been prevented. I won’t lie, I absolutely do not know everything about her life before I came along. Her stories about working for Harry Bock and dealing in precious jewels were important to me as a child, yes, but the title of “mom” always superseded the person she was before me. She raised me, an autistic child with complex medical issues and constantly-changing needs, through chronic pain and hardships that I still do not fully understand; swallowing down whatever bothered her for my own sake. Good, bad, or indifferent; that is the first place that she most profoundly influenced me. She taught me that love is sacrificial. As soon as I understood that, I took it to heart. From her example, I adopted the thought process that the things that matter are the things that require you to sacrifice something. When I graduate, I will use my artistic skills in both digital and traditional media to be innovative by focusing on making my audience uncomfortable, rather than appealing to their comfort and sensibilities. Sometimes, in order for a message to get through to an audience, you have to take them out of their comfort zone in a way that they do not expect you to. I have learned that it is easier to reach someone at their very core when they are already unsettled or thrown off balance in some way. I have already learned how to apply this tactic effectively in my personal studio art, where I frequently use the familiar shape of the human body as a vehicle for metaphor to elicit a more visceral reaction from my audience. Using this method, I want to incite positive changes in the thoughts and ideals of society at large, namely through evocative graphic design work that I would hope has the same disarming effect as my more masterfully-executed works of art. What makes my artistic skills unique to me isn’t derived from my technique or born from some new, innovative method that I developed in a creative fever. The simple reality is that my artistic abilities are how I connect with the experience of being human. My neurodivergence has made my perception of the world vastly different from how other people see it. I explain my experience as living in a world I can never truly understand or be a part of, which has led me to attempt to bridge the gap between myself and others by studying everything extensively. Artistic study is not a unique thing in the slightest, but what sets my efforts apart is that they are not academic in their intent. When I draw a friend or paint a sunset, I’m not making a picture that looks like what I see; I’m pouring memory and my own emotions into line and color. Self-portraits aren’t solely for building proficiency, they’re windows into my mind and self-image. What makes my artistic skill different is the attempt at connection it makes, not the objective technical understanding.

My process for finding artistic inspiration is, by all definitions, chaotic. I find inspiration everywhere I go, but the motivation that turns my ideas into art comes and goes like an erratic tide. Sometimes, I'm overwhelmed with the drive to make something; lots of somethings, so much so that my brain decides to start seeing entire masterworks in the grout of my bathroom tile. Everything I see is at a constant, vicious audition for my next idea. Primarily, though, I find great inspiration in the architecture of the human body. I enjoy finding the golden ratio in different parts of the body (the skull, hands, side profiles of the face, and placement of the eyes, specifically) and equating the structure of musculature to the anatomy of plants. I get a strange amusement out of likening the flesh to the ground I walk on, and consider every stone and blade of grass to be alive in some capacity and deserving of being immortalized.

The dinosaur that I chose to draw is the brachiosaurus, a massive sauropod that was alive during the late Jurassic period. I drew this dinosaur in my digital painting software of choice, Clip Studio Paint. The brachiosaurus is my favorite dinosaur mainly because it was the first dinosaur I was exposed to as a child. My mother got a copy of the book “Danny and the Dinosaur” for me when I was young, which prompted me to become infatuated with dinosaurs in general, specifically the brachiosaurus. I distinctly remember thinking that the brachiosaurus had a “kind” face, which was most likely the catalyst for my specific attachment to the dinosaur. I was fascinated and utterly enamored with dinosaurs both as a concept and a field of study, so much so that I decided that I wanted to be a paleontologist at the ripe age of four. I asked my mother to put “Doctor Analiese, Paleontologist” on all of my school notebooks for all of elementary school, dug up odd-shaped rocks so I could insist that I’d found a fossil in my backyard, and would devour every dinosaur-themed book that I could get my little hands on. I joined the junior division of the Dallas Paleontological Society once I was old enough to sit through multiple hours of scientific seminars, and inevitably went on quite a few fossil hunts. After I almost got heat stroke on my third dig, I came to the rude realization that I was most definitely not cut out for field work. I continued going on digs for years, slowly edging away from my childhood dream of finding an “Analiese-o-saurus” and pivoting to quieter, more practical applications of my special interest. First, I shifted to cleaning and prepping fossils after I discovered that working with an air scribe was fun. Then, it was finding hypothetical alternative muscle structures for existing skeletons. I shifted to speculative paleontological art, then paleontological art in general, and even settled for the idea of drawing dinosaurs for children’s books. Once I sat through my first high school career counseling appointment, however, I was forced to face the reality that my dreams weren’t realistic. Realistic or not, I still love dinosaurs as an adult.

Art is an ouroboros cycle in my life. On one hand, creating is the only thing that keeps me alive sometimes. I need to create like I need to breathe; it’s a part of me. On the other hand, the drive to create is the very thing that kills me. It’s suffocating, a pressure in my ribs that taking a deep breath can't ever hope to ease. My art is shaped by my experiences, my memories, and ultimately, me; and the ‘me’ that I am presently— and have been for a long time— is uncomfortable. I have a desperate, aching need to make myself known to the world that I can never fully understand or be a part of. My experience is unique, and to achieve the understanding that I crave, I give people a window into how I see the world through my art. My brain turns everyday things and experiences into something worthy of being immortalized through creation, which has most definitely set me apart during my walk in this world I navigate. I know that I'm not the only person who tries to be seen through their art, which is exactly why I am so enamored with studying it, because art isn't just a work; it's a reflection of the person behind it, however warped or hidden. I want to understand the minds that create the beautiful images that saturate our society, not just out of curiosity, but because of the part of me that resonates with what I see wants to bridge the gap between myself and the soul behind the canvas. My artistic process is, by all definitions, chaotic. I find inspiration everywhere I go, but the motivation that turns my ideas into art comes and goes like an erratic tide. Sometimes, I'm overwhelmed with the drive to make something; lots of somethings, so much so that my brain looks like Einstein's desk at his death. And sometimes, the perfectionism that lives under my skin forces me to work and work and work until the object of my obsession is completely and utterly ruined. Other times, I have ideas pouring from my ears, but no way for me to shape them into a concept I can articulate through my pretty little pictures. In my art, I usually end up making a lot of visual metaphors. Most commonly, I use the human body— usually my own, as it is the one I am most intimately familiar with— and its various parts to illustrate these metaphors. I do this because I struggle to articulate myself when it comes to describing my own emotions, mental images coming more naturally to me than words. My art is just another way for me to say what I might be feeling about any given thing, so I incorporate meaning into actions, postures, expressions; whatever I can to turn abstract thoughts into something tangible.