Component Exploration: Reflecting on Hope’s Art

Painting by Hope

Hope (they/them) – Artist’s Statement and Reflections

Bringing all the symbolism from my two cultures in one thing is kind of a tricky thing. This one is a native ancestor, Jewish ancestor, native ancestor, Jewish ancestor, Jewish, then these two images are native.

I’m going to be putting the stars of David all over wherever I can fit them. Add little pops of that and then like this one has, I think the most detail and, like the arrows are for North and South, and that’s how you’re supposed to wear a blanket, is all of the arrows on a blanket are supposed to be facing South and North, and it’s a part of the blanket ceremonies and then I have this girl with a headdress and fringe outfit kind of like a regalia outfit. This one supposed to be like an ancestor who is ancient Jewish ancestor and trying to go with as much symbolism as I can, so I gave him a talit, which is like you might have seen traditional like rabbis wear like that white scarf. So, this one it’s a traditional head dress like a head covering that Jewish women wear and I just put some earrings because that’s also something both of my cultures enjoy wearing. I gave two the little kippah, you might know them as a yarmulke.

I did the full background with black and then I began to do the shapes and colors. It was hard to figure out how to do the colouring because I didn’t want anything to be lost in the the dark colours because, like this one I’m [working on], you can barely see but it’s turning out nice.