(psycho)analyzing my art
I like looking at people’s art because it makes me see the world through their eyes.
I love seeing how intricate hands often mean a deep connection and fascination with them, as something the artist focuses on first in a person. Maybe they’re the touchy-feely kind, loving to pat your back and brush the hair behind your ear and hold hands?
I love looking at a painting and feeling how they must have wanted to not just document this great sky they saw, but also how it made them feel and what the vibe was. I love seeing a slightly stylized, personal and odd way to draw leaves and small branches, but still so realistic that it makes me realize that you can see them that particular way as well. Like there’s one part of it the artist specifically finds memorable about them or perceives them, and it adds a new dimension to how I see things as well.
So I thought I could look at my own art and see myself and some of my preferences in it, too. It’s obviously a little cheating because I know myself, but I wanna do it anyway.
These images are also in my gallery.
First off, I paint more landscapes; grass, bushes, plants, trees, rocks.
I am really, really bad at bodies! I like to think of it as connected to being somewhat blind about people; it’s not just face-blindness, but having a hard time recognizing people out of their usual contexts, or being able to remember their eye color or what they wore last. So I’m kind of blind about people, but my sense of orientation is good. I think it is also connected to being rather isolated and difficulties with understanding others at times. To me, nature just is, you know what it is and what it looks like and it’s easy to remember and navigate, but people are very different from each other.
There’s also one other common pattern; there is either a path or a lake. If there isn’t, it’s a mix of both, so a river. I think I like something that brings movement into the view, guides your eye, helps create depth and separates pieces of the art. To me it speaks to being straight-forward and focused, with a clear goal and a way to get there. I never draw a split path or a river being split, there is only one way, and the lakes are usually in the center. I map out anything I have to do to attain a certain goal, I tend to over-prepare and look up how to get somewhere very early and multiple times, and if a car is involved, I like to research parking beforehand or even rent a spot to calm my mind. Knowing the itinerary of something is so important to me. So one path, done deal, no distractions.
Away from this type of art I make, I am also obsessed with gradients. You can see it on my website, too. I am really in love with the work of Agnes Pelton and Anna Trochim.
There is something that drives me to create round, bulbous, soft shapes with gradients or that blend in smoothly at the right parts while being sharply contrasted in a different area. I haven’t created too much of that because it tickles my brain in a way that would have me like Irving Bailiff painting the black hallway over and over again, so I try to limit that.
Also, the best gradients I like are done with oil painting and I tried, but I don’t have a studio or good way to air everything out so the few times I did it stunk up my whole apartment and gave me a terrible cough because of the paint thinner, letting the paint dry, and varnishing, all causing fumes where I eat and sleep. So unfortunately I have to stick to inferior paints for this task which makes it look worse but it’s ok. The below is made with gouache:
To me, gradients are soothing, and the type of gradient I’m after isn’t just a gradual change of one color into the next, but also conveys softness. There are very flat and clinical gradients to me, and gradients that convey a softness like a cloud.
And I want softness, I want comfort, I want ease. I think of my hurting bones sinking into my white sheets, and of resting my eyes in something soft, uncluttered, easy. I think of all the perfect sunsets I have seen, combined and refined. Especially circle gradients are amazing, because they remind me of sources of light and of souls. I often feel like a soul trapped in a meat suit that wishes to fly outside of it and feels detached. I think the effects that colors have on mood are the strongest for me in these circles.
The other art I make tends to be digital art like pixel art and glitch art. Basically all pixel art I created has been for different versions of my website.
I think pixel art appeals to me because it feels simpler and more rules-based than for example, my gouache painting. Boxes, straight lines, rules on how to achieve gradients. It’s somewhat measured out and easier to control than traditional art, and as with all digital art, easy to undo. There’s also not an expectation that everything will be perfect because of the design restraints imposed by the pixels and the resolution, which puts my perfectionist self a little at ease. I am a bit of a control freak about my art and my surroundings.
Plus, the act of setting each dot by hand is a bit soothing; I can turn my head off and just let my hands and eyes deal with it. The repetitive motion reminds me of stimming and of sewing on a sewing machine, something I also like to do. I also think pixel art speaks to the “cute” side of me - it’s retro, it’s the art style in games that many people grew up with. It’s nostalgia, it’s childhood without being negatively childish, and it’s often (not always) depicting something cute. Cute buttons, cute animals, bows, dolls, lace borders for your website.
I especially love pixel art with a prominent sky, like by 8pxl, and a separate thing I like is pixel art featuring lived-in rooms or someone’s unmade bed with their little snacks, devices and plushies strewn around. It appeals to me because the motives seem so complex, but the art itself so simple but doing it justice, and making the mundane or messy look cute. I want to create pixel art like that, but haven’t gotten around to it for now.
Glitch art, to me, speaks to bending real life things in a way that isn’t possible in real life. It’s envisioning it happening and making it happen anyway, like a picture. Seeing more in the things you have in front of you, like it has a mind, a spirit of its own. Like this glitch edit I made of an Animal Crossing fish glitching out of my Switch into the real world:
I also made art inspired by the early versions of NeuralBlender:
I think the glitch art I create says something about me feeling like an alien, like someone that shouldn’t have made it here but did. That there are expectations that I don’t fulfill, but many more no one expected from me. Maybe it’s about queer identity too.
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Published 20 Mar, 2025