Abstract:
As my therapist once told me, anxiety at its heart is fear of the future. The future
never gives itself away, which perhaps what makes it so frightening. Most people I’ve
met spend their nights falling asleep to thoughts of the unknown. From dealing with
fear of my own mortality, to my own successes/failures, or arriving somewhere on time,
fear of the future is not alien to me; it’s what I sulk in. With this thesis, I sought to challenge my own thinking. No constant self-loathing or nail-biting, but willingness to wonder what memories are yet to be had. What if I fabricated memories that don’t exist yet? Or a world that doesn’t exist, but could be constructed in some way within a lifetime? What if the concept of future itself was something to look forward to? What if it could, in turn, help us make most of our present? In this body of work, I paint a world I want to see now, and later. Through fantasy and emotion, I illustrate a world that doesn't already have bad endings— there’s always a possibility for more.
