Anxiety: A Practice in Color

This piece represents anxiety. I immediately knew that the bold warm colors of red, yellow, and orange would give a feelings of urgency and fear that anxiety entails. The shapes are angular to add to that feeling, and the black scribbling cloud shapes represent the mind racing and the muddled thoughts that result from anxiety. Once it came to the actual shape and movement of the piece, I remembered what a friend once told me when she was experiencing extreme anxiety: it's like you're in the middle and everything is racing at you and you can't escape it because everywhere you turn there is more coming at you.

Black and White Composition

For this composition I wanted the eye to move up the page to the upper right corner. For this I used the circles getting smaller and lighter to draw the eye up. To balance this movement I created heavy lines in the upper left corner and also had slight movement down the page with the rotated squares. The heaviness of the black circle in the lower right and the black lines in the upper left balances the composition diagonally. I created the differing grays throughout the circles, squares and lines to give the composition more depth than if it were a simply black and white. This difference in color also allows the black objects to appear heavier and have more of an impact.