My interpretation of Grief in an art form

As an artist I find it refreshing how I can use creative expression as an outlet for how I'm feeling. I can express things that I am unable to express verbally. In 2010, my younger brother past away and I was struck with grief. As I was facing this new reality of lose and grief I found art as my source for expressing how I felt. Words were not there, so I expressed my feelings through my art. There was one piece in particular that started a series of pieces. I call it the FOG. Its my interpretation of the early stage of grief. The idea for the piece came to me while sitting in my car. It was a rainy day and I felt overwhelmed with sadness and I leaned my head against the glass and in doing so noticed the fog my breath created on the class as a rested there a while. At that moment it came to me that this was a perfect image of what the beginning stage of grief was like; the rain hitting one side of the window pane and fog forming on the other. The tears soak the outer facade of the person while inside the person is in such a daze they are just going through the motions of life without fully being there in the moment because their grief is so encompassing. The image to the right is the art piece I did that reflects this idea.

I created another piece in this series that reflected my feelings once the lost set in. I did this piece using chalk pastels in purples, greens, and yellows and drew it on drawing paper. My goal with this pieces was to express my sense of frustration with lose and grief.








The black and white pastel image is a third pieces I created in the series. This is a less dramatic representation of grief.