Janica Soro

Pacific Grove High School

Junior

My name is Janica Soro, and I am a junior enrolled in AP Studio Art at Pacific Grove High school. Art is precious to me. Often, I go about my day, whether at home or school, thinking about other worlds, people, and events, delighting that I have the ability to breathe life into them through art. I use art to tell stories with carefully placed lines where words would normally be, so my art becomes an outward expression of my inner world.

I enjoy illustrations with gouache, acrylic, and colored pencils, however, I see myself as primarily a digital artist. Texture and mark-making are elements of my work that helped develop my personal style of illustration. Since the beginning of the Covid-19 era, many of my works explore themes of the importance of family and coping through seasons of grief. I use events that happen in my life to build the world in my head, and while it helps me cope, it aids in my discovery of new things about myself and the imagery I want to express.

This piece, Storm-Chasers, reflects my personal experience with grief and my journey through it. Using gouache, acrylic, and colored pencil this work is a rendition of a digital illustration I made on the first day of 2021. This piece is important in my artistic journey because it captures the truth of myself in the middle of the storm of grief; where I found calm in the eye of one. The figures here are a family, and I’ve channeled my conflicting emotions through these characters - some are looking back, some are looking ahead. Being stuck in the middle of a storm is a strange plane of existence, but there is peace of mind when knowing there is a way out.