Melancolie

This painting is Part 2 to my series called “The Unraveling Series”. It is apart of a series that is continuing and based off of emotions. It opens up the conversation to mental health in the black community. The black community represented through the hair, done by alcohol marker. This piece is actually really personal to me. The skull, used to symbolize a deep level of exposure to what is going on inside the mind is uncomfortable to many people to look at but has open the door to that conversation. On the outside, the unraveling face shows a woman who seems to be really content and relaxed, yet on the inside her skull is cracked, broken, and she’s crying. The goal of this piece is to speak one of most common battles in mental health which is depression. I use the color red to symbolize that emotion. The background, inspired by Kehinde Wiley, portrays three symbolic flowers to aid in the meaning. The “Rose” used to represent the content on the outside and the white flowers called “forget-me-not” represent the depression on the inside. The third flower in this piece is the “Black Dahlia” but cannot be seen as easily as the others. That is because it is meant to blend in. It is there, yet hides behind the rose to show how people mask their emotions to make them seem okay to others. Every corner of this piece is painted to immerse the subject into the emotion and immerse the audience into what they are seeing.