This year during Portfolio, I chose to experiment with translating feelings directly into my art. A person who feels things very intensely, I wear my emotions like an evening gown, and that is reflected in these large-scale abstract pieces.
Saturn has a passion for the abstract. They paint feelings and emotions that they experience in daily life in the form of massive, color and texture filled canvases. Saturn describes their own work as “violently personal;” they are putting their innermost thoughts essentially on a billboard of their own making. They also incorporate music into their work, listening to a song and painting the feelings it evokes within them. Some artists that have been a part of their process recently include Taylor Swift, Ricky Montgomery, Big Red Machine, and Hozier, selected for their lyrics as well as the feelings conjured up by the melodies, rhythms, and composition.
I don’t do art because I’m good at it. I do it because I like it. Society tells young people that we shouldn’t do something unless we’re good at it, and that if we’re good at something, we’re obligated to do it. Passion is taken out of the equation. For me, my art is purely about passion. It’s about taking my emotions and putting them on a canvas with my bare hands. There is no precision, no method to the madness. Sometimes, my art is beautiful. Sometimes it’s scary. I want to make people feel a whole range of emotions in a small space and a small span of time with my art. In reality, life is about feeling all of your emotions. Be happy. Be sad. Be angry. I want to remind people to feel everything, and to do what makes them happy. My recent project involves selecting a song and painting what it makes me feel. I listen to the song once, then play it again and create a painting in the span of the song. These pieces are about allowing me to get in touch with and nurture my inner artist. The fingerpainting aspect is a throwback to preschool, before art was something to be good at. As I create these paintings, I allow myself to fall in love with the process, not the product.