My name is Amahna Oommen, and I am currently pursuing a degree in Visual Arts in hopes of working in the concept illustration field in my future. I am a South Asian originating from Canada, and recently have moved to the Southern United States. I find joy in creating any way possible. I sculpt, make jewelry, paint, draw, graphic design, and also play multiple instruments. My greatest passion of all comes from 2D illustration. Most typically painting and drawing. I’ve attached my pieces which have the most personal meaning and which are my best examples of storytelling through art, and I hope that you may be able to see even a small part of how important they are to me. Through artistic expression, my goal is to move my viewers. I want people to feel changed after they’ve shared an experience with my art. In terms of my future profession in concept illustration, I am working to be a part of a creative community that emphasizes and celebrates originality and imagination within storytelling. With the sudden exponential increase of use in artificial intelligence seen in the creative business, especially within the past few years, genuine creativity is becoming increasingly scarce. Film and television are not what they used to be. And although there are still great pieces of media that are being released, they get displaced by the sheer amount of unimaginative slop that large executive companies push out solely for the purpose of profit. This explains the sharp increase of sub-par and unoriginal live actions as well as sequels that tank in the box office. Pressure and time limitation on artists increases, while their pay decreases due to the competition and implementation of artificial intelligence into every crevice of the creative industry. While it may seem that I’m complaining about an unsolvable issue, this is precisely what I am passionate about. In my work, I am hoping to create a difference in the way that creatives are seen and treated in the workforce. While it will take a lot more than simply creating moving work, I hope that my current work may pave the way towards opportunities where I can make that difference. In my future, I imagine that I will still be creating art, both commercially, and personally. I see myself being heavily involved in the local and more broad art community, contributing in any way possible. I know that my work will have changed stylistically as time passes, and that will only reflect the changes that I've gone through leading up to that point, and I can’t wait to see that for myself. Thank you so much for taking the time to hear about my artistic life, and for presenting me with the greatest opportunity to share that. It is a gift to share the same love for art that Lewis did, and I know that his creativity and passion has made a difference even in ways that we can’t see. I hope to shine that same light that he did through my work.

Art has always been my best friend. Someone that I can turn to when I need to feel like my most authentic self. The relationship between myself and my art is one that I can only describe as symbiotic. Not only have my experiences and inner workings influenced my artistic expression, but my art has shaped my experiences and self in the exact same way. I am constantly changing and so does my craft as a result. When I first began to identify myself as an artist, around the fifth and sixth grade, my art had a very ‘cookie-cutter’ appearance and feel to it. The same concept in the same format, page after page. A bust-up portrait of a single beautiful woman with cartoonishly big eyes. As boring and shallow as that might sound, I loved it. That perfectly reflects who I was during this period. I wanted consistency. I had moved schools about four times by this point, and my parents were facing severe instability in their marriage. To counter this, I sought out reliability in my work. I drew what I knew that I was good at. I was innocent to all of the cruelties of the world, and very easy to influence, so my art naturally followed that same course. Further along in my journey, the dreaded Covid-19 hit and my life was very harshly and very quickly changed, just as everyone else’s. The only difference was, I was homeschooled, going through puberty, and all with no friends as I had just immigrated to America. I had no one to see, and nowhere to go. I very quickly fell into a deep depression as I was faced by the realization that my art; the only thing I could turn to in such a difficult time, had no substance or meaning to me. I also had a large internet following at this time for my portraits, but as I woke up every single day and created the same drawings and filmed the same videos I was led to the conclusion that what I made truly had no purpose. So I stopped making art, and disappeared for months from my social media presence. When my passion finally made its way back to me, years later and closer to now, I had become a very different person. Mature in so many ways, and discovered what brought me life and gave me identity. So when I finally made the effort again to express myself artistically, it came in ways I had never even thought of. Creating art that was personal to me didn’t feel like a chore, but like something that had been waiting for me my entire life. If I was speaking to someone going through emotional struggles such as I have in my past, I would without a doubt encourage them to observe how far they’ve come as an artist. Their experiences and hardships can contribute to your expression in deeper and valuable ideas than they could previously have even dreamed of. Art also can be a crucial tool to identify those difficult emotions by inspecting its path over time. The pieces I’ve attached is the culmination of my every defining moment I've ever experienced. They capture all of the complexities of my mind and character, all condensed into single images. My passion is shown through my work because I seek to find beauty and meaning in the less beautiful moments in life. While the images might appear more simple, the experiences and life that fueled them are the exact opposite.

I have had a plan since the fifth grade for what my future career would look like, and I can proudly say that my intensive planning was not in vain. My name is Amahna Oommen. I am a current senior studying visual arts at Ovey Comeaux High School and I look forward to telling you about myself as an artist. I relate heavily to Al's experience in feeling conflicted about whether the right choice is to pursue a logical, guaranteed path, or one of the heart's desires. Making that decision was one of the hardest in my life; only made more difficult by advice to keep art as a hobby, and to focus on a career that "matters". Hearing Al's story gives me confidence in my choice to live without fear of failure. I can guarantee that others applying for this scholarship agree. Taking my early life into consideration, being a successful artist was not likely. I grew up in Canada, primarily in private schools where art education was not a focus in the curriculum, and in some cases, entirely absent. Despite that fact, being an artist has been in my heart for as long as I can remember. My official realization came after my fourth-grade year that I wanted to pursue art. At this point, I was homeschooled and did not have any close friends or a creative outlet. I picked up sketching in my notebooks as a hobby, which soon became much more. From there I could see the future that I wanted, day after day was spent falling further in love with drawing, and my vision became clear. I was going to be a professional artist someday. I still have that same artistic passion that I held before. I frequently spend my time illustrating and painting so that I am prepared to become a concept illustrator following college. As a minority, I intend to use my skills to diversify the creative industry and to represent misunderstood groups; those who do not have the representation that they deserve in mainstream media. In my personal work, I also use my artistic voice to express visual representations of topics that I believe need more consideration by the public. Feminist history and studies are also near and dear to my heart. I paint pieces to reflect values held towards women now and in the past, and with this scholarship, I would have the chance to immerse myself in artistic spaces and be able to convey these matters in a way that I know they deserve. It is a privilege to be able to be living in a time as an artist where one is given the choice of how they want to spend their future. Having role models like Al whose lives we may look back on gives artists like me the faith to live without restraint. That is a legacy worth being proud of.

As a child, arts education discouraged me. I grew up in private Christian schools for almost my entire educational career, and art programs were scarce, and in certain schools were even completely absent. Art was not a focal point in the curriculum, so I didn't have the opportunity to really understand it. My 'art instructors' were typically just a homeroom teacher being paid to supervise the class doing finger painting or something of that sort. My earliest art teacher that I have memory of was an incredibly harsh woman. She was completely opposed to any creative freedom, and would grade (elementary) students based on accuracy to the original piece, and would frequently call out a student in front of the entire class if they did something she did not deem accurate. There was one occasion where the assignment was to use the tip of a paintbrush to create leaves on a fall scenery. She was very passionate about keeping the colors separate so that we wouldn't "ruin" it. As I did the project I mixed the red and orange leaves together, because I liked the look of the blended colors better than the harsh contrast, and the pretty orange shade they made inspired me, so I would add orange leaves in between the red and the yellow to make the difference less harsh. And I was incredibly proud of my work. When she saw what I had made, she promptly scolded me, then held my painting up to the whole class, making it clear that I was the example of what not to do. Although this might not seem like a big deal, as an incredibly sensitive first grader, this felt like my life was over. My face went red, and I held in tears that whole day, deciding that I didn't want to make art anymore. It wasn't until the fourth grade that I had a teacher recognize my inclination for art. He was my homeroom teacher. He was a surfer with absolutely no knowledge about art, but he saw things in me that I didn't even see in myself. I had never expressed any interest in becoming an artist, even my parents hadn't made that connection, but he did. He would encourage me to add drawings to assignments that did not require them, and even looked to me for advice on art. Being so young, I was puzzled when he pulled me aside to ask if he should use watercolor or acrylic paint for our upcoming holiday art project --painting wood planks to look like snowmen--. Yet I answered, "Acrylic. Watercolor would just absorb into the wood.". I didn't realize that was a well articulated response from a child, and that a grown man wouldn't have thought of that, or maybe even he just was giving me an opportunity to contribute to the class. What I do know, is how that single interaction is one that has stayed with me to this day. Since then, I've had much better art teachers who have offered actual insight in my skills, but his encouragement is what has echoed in my mind every time I've made any advancement as an artist. He had faith in my future before I even had faith in myself. So if anyone has inspired me most, it was my fourth grade teacher.

Chase, Gap, Fire, Cave Spider, Mark, Position, Thorn Quill, Drew, Void, Hokey Pat, Renaissance, Pineapple, Tank Yellow: Fire, Cave, Spider, Renaissance. ( ____ Man) Green: Tank, Gap, Position, Void. (Things that you can fill) Blue: Thorn, Pineapple, Hokey, Quill. (Things that are ‘pokey’) Purple: Mark, Drew, Pat, Chase (Names that are also verbs) For yellow, I understand that most people will automatically think of Spider-Man when they are looking for similarities or possible connecting words when they see ‘spider’ as he is one of the most beloved hero’s of all time. The rest came after that thought of things not too similar, but still being able to be followed by ‘man’. Green, being slightly more difficult, I decided that ‘Void’ and ‘Gap’ would be connected by the player most quickly, then they would figure out what they have in common. Blue isn’t quite grammatically correct, with the word ‘pokey’ being used as more of a slang for something that would poke someone; but I thought it would be a clever play on words once the player gets it. Lastly, purple I chose that group because although they seem so obvious next to each other, when spread out correctly I think that the verbs mixed in with the other words will add a nice difficulty, especially when in play with the other categories.