Nancy Yao (2027, Undeclared)
iPad Pro and Apple Pencil, Procreate 
 
Touched By Fury I Rage At My Self, 2022

In this digital drawing, I wanted to portray a feeling of mania or witnessing yourself in an elevated state. The larger figure looks on as a smaller, more archetypal representation of another figure - perhaps a distorted version of the self? - catches on fire and falls to the grass as waves crash behind her. Meanwhile, a small green dragon leaps through the smaller figure's chest and sprays steam onto the face of the larger figure. The entire piece is framed by a maximalist border of ultramarine flames, which simultaneously creates a feeling of theater and of departure from reality. The unique organic texture adds to the uneasy energy that thrums through the piece.

 
Mystic Forevermore, 2022
 
This digital drawing explores loneliness. The figure on the right is looking just past the figure on the left, whose face we can't even see. Their surroundings, which are composed entirely of the open night sky and some strange-looking trees, are so decontextualized that they seem to be completely alone, or alternatively the scene seems to be a dream. I put the two-headed birds and the bleeding cupid in as sort of a "drawing in a drawing," something I've been experimenting with recently–the idea generally is that the larger scene (in this case the two people standing in the trees) is a portrayal of something occurring more on the surface - a look from the outside into a scene. The little scene (in this case cupid and birds), by contrast, is a more abstract portrayal of what's going on subconsciously and archetypally. In this case the two are in conflict - the larger scene seems to portray a bittersweet longing, but the cupid and two-headed birds point to harm and loss. It is implied that the cupid's blood is genital blood, either from menstruation or castration.
 
We Dance On The Invisible Lattice Created By God, 2022

This digital drawing is about coming to terms with the self, or about meeting another version of the self in an unspecified psychic landscape. Flame-like, wave-like borders frame almost everything. It was mostly made while the artist was suffering a period of profound psychological and physical suffering as a result of undiagnosed mental illness (among other things, a very probable mood disorder). A slightly different version of yourself emerges through the psychic mirror portal and pulls you in, hypnotically, and for a moment you fall into the delusion.

From The Witching Hour, Granoff Center for the Creative Arts, January 23 - February 26, 2023