Danica Dancel Carlos

Marina High School

Senior

As an artist, my goal is to make art that makes me and others happy. I create simply because I want to, and I want to continue under that mindset. I also create to express myself and to explore my identities.

As for preferred mediums, I usually never worked with paint because I never felt confident in it. However with the freedom of the prompt of this competition I decided to take an artistic risk and use paint, and it reinvigorated my motivation to use paint as a medium again.

For my current piece, despite the seemingly cool, peaceful nature, it’s an expression of anger. I painted a woman with white skin that expressed my internalized anger towards colorism in the Asian community. The eyes looking towards her represent my fear of being seen as someone who I’m not. The fear comes from the white American gaze not seeing me as a “real Asian” (because of me not being Chinese, Japanese, or Korean) as well as my impostor syndrome as an artist. The collaged text is from an English assignment about cliches. I decided to include it because as I was painting the piece I was reminded my art was going to be compared to others. Then I was afraid of being seen as basic or uncreative. #is fear turned into anger towards my own art so I thought an assignment about cliches would be fitting. All of my stress and anger about school, being first generation, and wanting to be successful flowed into this piece.