Phantom Waltz, graphite and color pencil
Evelyn Flores
Everett Alvarez High School | Senior
With regards to art, I tend to go all in with my emotions. When it comes to my art pieces I feel it as a way to express and open up about my feelings even if they may not be clear in the drawing or painting.
Over this quarantine, I was faced with many hardships and the most awful art-block and could not produce anything for a while, up until now. This leads me to my art piece Phantom Waltz. At first, I felt pretty nervous to put this out there, but now that I have gone through with it, I find this piece to be extremely important to me - not just because of the outcome, but because of its purpose.
This piece is not only a self portrait but also contains a rather personal story, going through a very difficult time in my life I felt this skeleton and I had a genuine conversation about life. As we danced, they helped me in recovering my emotions and helping me feel a strong sense of determination to get back up and start over strong. Whether it was my inner conscienceless or possibly a spirit, I am not sure. I just know that I was grateful for the ‘pep talk.’ The flowers are aztec marigolds, commonly used on El Dia de los Muertos (The Day of the Dead), which help the departed loved ones travel to the main world to see their family again. I don't want to refer to it, but Coco (a Pixar animated feature film), is an inspiration. Growing up I believed in spirits (thanks to my grandma’s influence). I added the flowers to show my respect to whom I spoke with. The flowers are in a color which show the life these flowers portray, their importance and their meaning.