MIMOSA PEDERSOLI

Tempera on canvas

70cm x 60cm

Still

Contiguity

Tempera on paper 30cm x 42cm

Id, ego, super-ego Tempera on canvas 50cm x 70cm

No

Marine treasure

Watercolour on paper

21cm x 29.7cm

I found the IB Visual Arts course like a journey where I was constantly collecting my own thoughts, ideas and inspirations and manifesting them into life. The process starts with initial sketches, developing into visceral artworks. This approach was both a learning process where I bettered my skills and knowledge of art, and a way of exploring what I am capable of, whilst acknowledging the process of creation. I gained inspiration from other areas of knowledge such as literature through associated imagery of my pieces, starting with Monet’s water lilies, which inspired me to create a face floating on the surface of the water, linking images from Ophelia; the character who ended up drowning in a bathtub of plants and flowers in Hamlet by William Shakespeare, both my sculpture and Ophelia being a face showing upon water, as if just drowned. I was largely inspired by nature, hence all the elements of nature in my pieces, such as my sculpture of a crescent moon, made from air-dry clay. Artworks like Monet’s paintings of water lilies and lily pads, Christo’s plastic wrapping around trees influenced my pieces in myriad ways, I created my painting of wrapped-up plant and merged the idea of plastic from Christo and nature from Monet’s water lilies to make flowers out of plastic bottles, resulting in the effect of recreating nature through recycling, along with the idea of creating something natural using unnatural materials.

The IB has strengthened my passion for fashion design. Through it, I developed a professional approach and have found unique ways of integrating diverse media. The first piece I produced was a graphite drawing that built my skill set and started my investigation in compositional arrangement in order to create strong juxtaposition in my work. I discovered the value of contrast through the influence of Yayoi Kusama’s vivid use of colour. Her work was responsible for generating my ideas in successive studio pieces and she has undoubtedly shaped the conceptual message of my first acrylic painting, “Unsettled” which highlights the confusion caused by mental illness. I then explored another aspect of this concept in “Restrict” which conveys the sensation of constraint through the distortion of form. Form was then used to represent the physical and mental constraints of social expectations through the contrast in my next studio piece titled “Endangered by comfort”. Throughout the visual contrast of sharp shapes and soft organic form, the juxtaposition between the vicinity of danger and safety was enhanced. In these artworks, the motif of danger and comfort is prominent and relates to my own experience of needing to challenge myself. However, the motif of danger is not explicit in my works but rather it is expressed through symbolism and the connotation certain forms carry. In my observational drawing called “Connessi” which from Italian translates to “Connected”, the malleable property of fabric brings comfort and emphasises the danger from the sharpness of scissors, suggesting the closeness of harm and safety. As for “Unsettled”, the distortion within the reflection carries the value of misunderstanding or neglect for mental illness. Similarly, the symbol of the distorted straitjacket in “Restrict” connotes the danger and constraint created through internal conflict. Ultimately, “Endangered by Comfort” communicates the individual harm from avoiding challenging circumstances, and metaphorically portrays the relationship between harm and the self through the figure’s aculeated arms and soft form surrounding.