In my AP studio art concentration I am exploring the journey of self love. I chose to explore this topic in depth because it’s something I can truly connect to and therefore I am able to incorporate my personal emotions and experiences within my art. I believe blending my personal journey of self love within my art can help create a more universal message that others can also connect to. I want to show true, raw emotion within the journey and the hardships that come along with self love. I chose to call it a journey because there are constantly ups and downs. Self love is not something someone can attain and hold onto forever, it comes and goes. It’s a journey that teaches many lessons other than just how to love yourself. There are layers that must be unravelled within the experience and I want to illustrate the beautiful negatives and positives that unfold within this voyage. 

I begin with illustrating my pieces to represent the more dark mental states that go along with being human. Within my pieces I try to portray the negative emotions and experiences as physical beings to represent that they are real and to acknowledge that they are a part of existing. I try to detail the feeling of being lost and distant from yourself within my earlier pieces and as they progress, I begin to show the acceptance that I view as the first part of self love. Self love comes differently for everyone and I want that to be represented within my art. There is not a clear step-by-step process to follow in order to gain self love and my goal with this concentration is to show that everyone’s process and journey takes time and occurs in different stages. As my concentration progresses I slowly start to illustrate the blooming of self-acceptance and eventually, love. Since I do not believe self love is a clear path, I will be able to mix up the order of my art pieces to show how self love does not occur in one way.  The order is interchangeable. For some, self love may occur very rarely and for others, they may feel like they truly comprehend what it means to love themselves. I want to be able to represent all processes and forms that people experience during this journey, and I want to help show people that self love does not have to be a distant concept, it also does not have to be something that you “achieve” within a short period of time. Self love is an ongoing process, a journey.