Michaela Stewart

Fantasy on a Theme by Michaela Stewart

Thought?

Everything was covered in lipstick, everything, all over the counters and the floors, the thick grease, thick like blood, coating everything. She ran her fingers across it, creating tracks and getting the mess all over her manicured fingers. It bit into the cracks in her skin and she winced, ever-so-slightly, as the dry grease settled. Everywhere. It was everywhere. On all the perfume counters, across the beige marble tiles, but no used tubes could be found anywhere. Whatever this was, whatever act of rebellion, had destroyed it all, and now the blood was on her hands. The skinny heel of her stiletto skidded, and she gripped the edge of the counter in vain, for everything was coated, and she fell hard. Pain shot up her tailbone and she howled. At the pain in her back, and at the pain of losing everything. Her expensive dress was covered now, in the stuff, her hair streaked with it. She would not move. She would sit and scream, and every attempt to move would only yield more lipstick on her hands, more difficulty in standing up. She screamed and screamed and howled and wailed. She kicked and writhed until she collapsed entirely, she felt the disgusting grease between her cheek and the hard, slick floor. She stuck out her tounge, tasting the oily, perfumed stuff, then began to spit and whimper...

REGRET REGRET REGRET REGRET REGRET

she has beautiful feathers, every color from the deepest sapphire blue to the boldest saffron yellow

scrambling for the hem of her gown

should I scream she will not hear me should I fall she will not catch me

and why should she when her own light is so much brighter?

It’s my fault you su you give birth. It’s It’s my fault we wer nity. I made a choic woman’s strength. My riority forever. In you, or so they’ve b morrow and the day evil reptile enter of nature come to lacking? Did Adam alone, while he an in the start of wh ning of a power st lost for us all,

uffer as s my fault that the suffering of man died with Jesus and ours lives on. re expelled from the garden, to toil against the earth for all of eterce: woman’s stupidity. I wanted something: woman’s weakness. I took it: y independent decision without his consent has condemned woman to infethe first few days of life, I made a horrible mistake. Or so they tell beaten it into you yesterday and the day before, and as they will toafter. And yet you believe! You sit subservient- brainwashed. Did the the garden of purity so as to corrupt me? Or did an innocent creature me in the garden of my oppression to offer me nourishment when I was cuse to banish me from Eden, then, blame me, and find an exnd your God laughed at my pain, delighting hat was only the begintruggle that I

simply because at the start it was two against one, and my creators came first, giving me this body as a handicap- softer, thinner, one that bleeds and destroys before it can make life. They thought they had taken it all from me, when I took the first step onto the cold, hard, rock of the world, but I smiled a little to myself despite my rage.

Even through their conspiracy, God and Adam unknowingly gave me, gave us, God’s power. The power to create.

This all tells a very different story, when you loo

ok at it...

Nothing “" happens in the real world unless it

first happens in the images in our heads."�

Sublime.

“This is sublime, the knowledge that one is destined for something greater.�

REFLECTION

Throughout this project, I responded to the artistic prompts in basically the same manner. While I did experiment with different styles, most of the art is very believably mine, I mean, it looks very much like something I would make. Where I really started to see an interesting progression or change is in my written pieces. In the space of time of this project, I made the decision to break up with my boyfriend of three years and then had to deal with the overwhelming aftermath of that. The larger themes of frustration, anger, and change that we were presented with to create art from reflected how I had been feeling over the past month. There is a very clear story in my writing- you can see the progression of my subconcious through frustration, realization, and then finally, freedom.

In my first piece, the collage, one of the images contained what appeared to be an oil painting of lips, which made me think of the gross, oily, perfumed way lipstick tastes, and then I wrote a story about a salesgirl at a department store who comes to work early, only to find that all of the makeup counters, floors, and walls have been vandalized and covered with lipstick. In the prompt regarding free will, I thought of the story of Adam and Eve, so my charcoal sketch was of the garden of Eden and the tree of knowledge. I then wrote a monolouge from Eve’s perspective about original sin. That was my favorite prompt, because I had a whole bunch of ideas stemming from it, and the work I created out of it turned out to be the most “risky” for me, as it led me into a subject and style I don’t always feel comfortable in. My favorite material was collage, because I often feel limited by my drawing ability, and collage allows me to create really fantastic images with my compositional ability as opposed to the skill of my hand.

In my Eve monolouge, I took a risk by taking a controversial standpoint on an issue of religion and gender oppression. In my acrylic painting I took a risk (for myself) by attempting to paint a figure in very stylized, tribal way. Painting makes me nervous because of its permanent nature, and I was proud of myself for picking a style I could easily mess up and going for it anyway.

A consistency I notice in the conceptual approach to my pieces is that of women, oppression, and relationships. I think this is mostly due to the mindset I was in during the time of creation, as I mentioned earlier, but they are also issues I feel very passionately about. Therefore the energy is pretty consistently self-reflective. Similarly, almost all of my pieces bear my artistic signature of unified chaos, which I think is also a reflection of my mental state.

S E EM

TH

SECRETS

SELF-DESTRUCTION BELIEF

HEARTBREAK

VOICE

IMAGINATION

ROMANTIC RELATIONSHIPS

JOY VS. SADNESS IN SPIRITUALITY

LONGING

WOMEN'S EMPOWERMENT or OPPRESSION