Restoring mental health through art

COVID-19 came into our world 3 years ago and it has seriously affected and taken away people’s lives. This pandemic has caused the population to be in quarantine and lockdowns where they couldn’t go outside. Furthermore, this changed many people’s lives such as habits, personalities and mental health. Many people have suffered from depression, loneliness and many other issues as a result. Moreover, I’m one of these people. I have overcome many issues in my mental health by visiting places, playing sports or playing with my pet in my freetime. In this exhibition, I’m exploring different art styles and material to express the negative emotions that I had to deal with and the road to overcome those same emotions by finding beauty in the world. In addition, artists have influenced my style and technique, such as Vincent Van Gogh, Monet, and Picasso. Their art styles can evoke a range of strong emotions.

Most of the artworks that I made were landscape paintings. Landscape paintings can show the optimum contrast between the emotions. For example, a landscape can be very charming and pleasing to watch. In contrast, the deep meaning behind it can be very unhappy and bad. For example, Seaside, I chose to paint it using oil paint but using a post-impressionism method, which was the method that Van Gogh used to paint some of his artworks such as Starry Night Over The Rhône. The brush strokes were arranged the same way as Van Gogh did in his work. The brush strokes can represent the distorted world that the person sees in his road to overcome the negative emotions. When looking at Van Gogh and Monet’s artworks, I can feel both happiness and loneliness, which would fit my theme of “the road to overcoming the negative emotions.” I have used techniques from those artists and have two emotions contrasting each other. One of the techniques that they use is using contrasting colors, warm and cold. For example, Tour to Venice was made according to Monet’s style, which was Impressionism. The brush strokes weren’t that strong and individual, and by contrast, they were random brush strokes. Monet’s artwork influenced me because his Impression, Sunrise has a very encouraging meaning, which I could also use for my Tour to Venice to symbolize encouraging the person in the artwork to stay positive. Leonid Afremov, a palette knife painter using bright and contrasting colors has effectively influenced me in using bright colors. The combination of bright colors and the person that is distorted creates a contrasting feeling which could relate the two emotions. The other one was an abstract self portrait inspired by Picasso, the way he painted the portrait had the audience feeling a lot of emotions, also giving them bad feelings, where it perfectly fits one of my intentions and this could be one of the first artworks because the abstract painting can symbolize distorted matters. Another painter that influenced me was Daler Usmonov. He uses direct colors and the action of the person to convey feelings of loneliness and emptiness, which lead me to something like this as well.

I will arrange the Lost in Brightness first because it represents the loss and sadness of the character in the painting but also reaching for hope. All the other artworks will be the trip of that person where they are going through to cure the negative emotions. The artworks will only be kneaded on the board because all of my artwork is either paper or on canvas. What I want the audience to feel was distorted, sadness andloneliness at the beginning, feeling the same as the person in the artwork, then viewing the road to overcome the emotions. The audience will feel a little revitalized by the little hope along with the negative emotions. In the end, the audience will feel that the person is recovered after the distorted world that the person sees in the artwork, but still feeling a sense of emptiness and to discover that the person is actually the artist, which is me.