The Ego and the Id｜11 x 15 in. Mediums used: digitally painted.

The unconsciousness is where we use our impulses and desires most vividly. The more I uncover the depth of my mind, the more I notice the complexity and chaos that rules the inner world. My conscious ego is just a spectator compared to this undiscovered vastness.

Taking the initiative to learn things that I have no basic knowledge of has always been fear-provoking. At first, building this portfolio felt insurmountable to me. I wasn’t aware of myself as an artist or as a person enough to know how to paint out such an abstract concept. I was terrified to draw even a single line. However, this unsettling emotion inside of me became the ideal tool for awakening my potential within. I began to engage with fear and uncertainty and used it as the very tool to take me further into the unknown excitement of art creation. While I always used to plan everything out before painting anything, I drew without letting my perfectionism interfere with my work. I became one with my brush and painted out my innermost feelings and emotions, visually expressing the raw and unprocessed emotions inside. This was when I first realized what it meant to paint something as my true self; my inner child who was playful and spontaneous but was buried deep inside due to my strict ego. I reached out to diverse mediums and layered them, and combined both 2D and 3D qualities to add texture and illusion of depth. As I continued to rely on my impulses, they turned out to be highly abstract, filled with complexity that created flowy and bizarre imagery. Using organic shapes played a big role in creating a flexible, chaotic, and whimsical atmosphere, in contrast to geometric shapes, which convey rigidness and stiffness that could detract from the concept of imagination. All of these components integrated together into a piece, I was able to provoke the illusion of liveliness, as if this imaginary world was coming to life.