My name is Iphie Wilder, and I am a 16-year-old homeschool student from Carmel Valley. I’m currently taking classes at MPC, and I am hoping to finish my work there later this year, then enroll at the Center for Cartoon Studies in Vermont to continue my endeavors as an aspiring graphic novelist/comic artist.

Painting is my most recent dive into something new, after years of reluctance towards learning and practicing with paint and colors. Despite dabbling in many mediums, I think it’s undeniable that my drawings have always formed the backbone of everything I create. I’m a draftsman first and foremost, and I think that those drawing sensibilities will always preside over any medium I choose to work in.

Being homeschooled during the pandemic did a huge number on my sociability and my normally extroverted personality, as well as my mental health. Starvation, specifically, encapsulates feeling trapped in my unchanging world and my house with the same people, day after day, ignoring the detrimental absence of a social life I needed in order to thrive. Inside my bubble I was safe, all my days were similar and lacked spontaneity. I had a lot of time to explore myself and my own mind- but I knew what I had gained in self-reflection could not make up for a deficit in companionship and the social challenge of living amongst a world of other people. Even though I had grown to fear the outside world and the presence of everyone in it, my personal world had become a cage. This piece is a self-portrait, of sorts, from a time before I’d gained the courage to leap out of my comfort zone towards finding a better life for myself.