Natalie Sauceda, Environmental Hitmen, graphite and charcoal, $1000

Natalie Sauceda

Everett Alvarez High School

Senior

I am an artist with a brush, a pencil, and whatever falls into my hands. Since I was very young, I have nothing in my memory that I remember other than my first steps in life and in drawing. I believe in art because it is the only way I have known to elevate the spirit of the human being to the sublime, to perfection, beyond the aesthetic of it. For me, art is an exercise of conscience from the intellectual and artistic will. I consider it essential for our society to create a space for reflection through art that represents expression as a human being and awareness among a society of cultures linked in art, and through this create a teaching for ethics and freedom.

Personally, watercolor is the medium I feel most comfortable with. I also like to experiment with new techniques and media, and along with that, break the mold through conceptual art and critical thinking. In most of my art, I seek to represent social issues and topics from the present that concern us all as humanity.

This work responds to the current conditions of our world, devastated by industries that produce money at the cost of the global climate tragedy, exploiting natural resources such as the forest, dragging along fauna, flora, and human life itself. I took advantage of the basic element, which is wood. I firstly left some clear parts in the drawing and the background in order to leave the natural parts of the wood visible, and then with charcoal from a burnt piece of wood, I created the shadows of the drawing to produce that contrast of tones. Then I set fire to the edges of the painting, to accurately portray the deadly power of fire that can be seen in the burn marks left on the wood that represent one of the results of deforestation. This material is natural and, unfortunately for us, biodegradable; like the world that is being consumed.

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