Grade 12, Forest Heights Collegiate Institute
"This piece is a reworked version of a TIME Magazine cover featuring Tessa Thompson, an actress who advocates for representation of women of colour in the media. She is outspoken on LGBTQ+ issues and routinely plays female characters that break the mold. To see a woman like her on the cover of TIME magazine was very inspiring, and I hope it will help inspire more girls to pursue their dreams. When I was planning this project, I knew I wanted to revisit and rework a typical portrait, and also honour a person whose work I really respect.
"I think the concept of taking very polished and tidy pictures and shredding them into a colourful jumble of shapes and patterns is a lot of fun. One thing I did think about while painting this was how airbrushed and polished people usually look in magazines, how perfect they have to be, and then how wild the painting is. I think it’s a really cool idea, to take magazine glamour shots that have been edited so heavily and then turn it completely upside down and make it really weird.
"Several things inspired me to do this artwork. Possibly the most crucial influence, an Instagram artist @yyyaaannnnnniiiccckkk has this really explosive, interesting abstract style, and I was really drawn to it. They take art done by other artists and reimagine it completely in their own style, and then compare the two. It makes for a very unique art viewing experience, and I hope I managed to capture some of that in my own work. This is my own spin on their style; not quite as outside the box as them, but inspired by their shapes and lines. Another thing I was considering doing for this project was based on an art trend that’s been going around social media for a while: Draw This In Your Own Style. It’s exactly what @yyyaaannnnnniiiccckkk does, so I kind of combined the ideas and it ended up being more like Draw This In Someone Else’s Style. I was also, of course, inspired by Tessa Thompson and her TIME cover."