Grade 12 - 2012 Melinda

 I began my Visual Arts journey by searching out appealing visual images. I eventually began to think about more important subjects close to my heart. My theme of death was inspired mostly by my mother’s death about 2 years ago. The reality and inevitability of death and the fact that it is a natural event and not to be feared has great importance to me. I have used my two years of study and research as a way of helping me to make sense of death.

Death is connected to my personal experience, I have explored gifts for the death as a positive side of death. From my point of view, death doesn’t always have to be perceived as a negative subject. Through my second piece of work of the cat mummies, I realized that the beauty of death could also be shown as something positive in a way that it comforts people about their deceased love ones. There is much sadness and fear of death, but a positive energy to it exists as well. I have used mixed media in my folio including all manner of paint, paper maché, recycled paper and batik.

During my trip to China in 2011 one of the Chinese artworks we saw in the gallery influenced one my of my pieces of work; the use of the Chinese ink. It is used in my skull painting to create the depth and the dark shades of the skull depicting that people shouldn’t be scared of death at all. Throughout my research I have read that people shouldn’t be afraid of it, rather they should think of death as a new life that they will begin after leaving the life on Earth.