Madeleine Ravinski

Marina High School

Senior

When I was a kid I had a speech impediment that made it nearly impossible to communicate with my peers and teachers. I had no way of conveying my voice, so I ventured to art as a way to communicate emotions and feelings even the ones that were too strong for words. Now I make art because it is my nature and passion it is my outlet for stress.

My art is usually mixed media, although my favorite materials include crayons, oil pastels, colored pencils, and markers. In my art, I use animals to represent complex feelings and issues. I use the stereotypes of animals to create the narrative that I want to showcase.

In this piece, I focused on my feelings of sadness. I recognized how I like to hide in emotions of anger rather than vulnerability. This artwork is similar to pieces I’ve been working on recently where animals are morphed inside of other animals. I used a lion, tiger and a bull for the body which I think represent anger and a sad puppy coming out of it’s back to represent sadness. The positioning of the animals show how proud and anger are at the front of the layered emotion which we call sadness. The prominent bull body and horns shows the stability in anger and offensive emotions. The puppy being on the back of the bull represents how I can never completely mute sadness and like a tumor it will continue to weigh on me no matter how angry a front a put up.