Beautiful Corpses

Here are two paintings "Drifting" and "Ophelia", I started another Ophelia painting but it needs a little more work.

Today my teacher turned to me during critique and declared in front of everyone "You just love beautiful corpses don't you?". I had never quite put it that way in my mind, but I nodded in complete agreement and admitted that I was coming to that realization. It actually made me kind of happy to hear him say that. For a while now I have been battling these conflicting styles and subject matters within my mind. I love fairies, beauty, flowers, and I love blood, decay, melancholic themes. I guess all of them are romantic in a way. Well, this semester I have finally realized that there is no need to separate my interests, why not just paint "beautiful corpses"?

I like this! I am happy with it, I'm finally alright. I do not care anymore what people think of me at school, and since I came to terms with that I have been painting painting painting what I WANT TO PAINT. I used to be so scared that if I painted "fantasy" "romantic" or "gothic" themes that people would call my work cliche and silly, so I tried to conform the best I could to what I thought would not get me ripped apart by professors and students. I don't know what happened though, it was sometime a few months ago. I just decided you know what, I am going to do my own version of Ophelia because I want to and I don't care that it has been done before or that it is a cliche. So I did it for my first painting crit, and to my utter shock no one said anything bad, people really liked it! I was so surprised...and then I started doing more and more paintings of what I wanted and more and more people gave me compliments and wanted to talk to me about my work.

Now I know that no matter what, the most important thing is to stay true to myself and paint what I am passionate about, regardless of my fears. I have learned that in the end, people respect you much more when you confident in your ideas and passionate about them.

I wish I could go back in time and told my 17 year old freshman self all of this, but I am so glad I have finally learned. From now on I am making a promise to myself to never, ever betray my heart again when it comes to art.