Undermining expectations of a “lonely” world being entirely grey and/or depressing, my illustration, Lonely Girl’s Dreaming, presents a new perspective of a world unlike our own, recognising both peaceful and complex - rather than negative - emotions of a girl who feels she does not belong as she sorts them out in her dream world.
The piece itself has a young girl standing on the beach of her world with two sides, separated by a string. Each side represents opposing emotions, of peace contrasted to life’s stresses.
The main feature is an accumulation of symbolism. The string acts to separate the contrasting sides of this world, suggesting that fate is unstable, that it may be filled with happiness or difficulties, in both that string is fragile and that the line between hope and despair is delicate. Not only this, the string creates salience, having the viewer’s eye scan from the moody-red colours towards the calming blues to replicate these anxieties transforming into hopefulness for the future.
Thus, my piece attempts to capture the complexity and paradoxical nature of emotion from the perspective of an isolated, yet hopeful young girl.
