I take inspiration from everyday things I see in my city: oxygen levels decreasing, water levels rising and becoming toxic, temperature exceeding normal rates, and how greenhouse gases are being released, slowly killing life. A common question today is whether the current environmental crisis be reversed. It is the unknown. The effects on society and our planet ultimately lead to a total sense of dread, hopelessness, fear and despair. Historically, art has been used for many reasons but at its core is its ability to communicate information, shape our everyday lives, provide aesthetic beauty, and to make a social statement. To bring awareness to the idea of a better world, I have chosen to depict an alternate society that has succumbed to the negligence of our effects on this planet. The character, Oscar Thorn, wears a flower-cybernetic backpack with an oxygen mask connected via wires on the plants to survive. This illustration shows the damage is inevitable for climate change alone and how people are ignorant of recurring everyday problems. I feel hopeless about our future, and I strive to bring awareness to make changes for the future generations that will come after me ultimately avoiding this alternative life.

 -Angelina Almaguer

I've struggled with self-image for as long as I can remember. Feeling like your own worst enemy is an uphill battle with what seems like no end in sight. Often hoping to find validation in others can lead you ultimately to lose yourself, I did. Women and girls feel obligated to maintain a sense of beauty and character, but what really is beauty? Some say beauty is the eye of the beholder. It is literally impossible to be a woman. We must be extraordinary but somehow, we end up with the outcome of doing it wrong! You must be a boss, but you can't be mean. You must lead, but you should not upstage your peers. You must be different but not to the extent you exclude yourself, you must protect yourself, but you must not forget the others. The artist Jun Yang became a big source of inspiration for me when I saw his solo show at the Bakersfield Museum of Art last fall. His ability to use color, self-portraits and florals to communicate his own journey of finding self-love and acceptance made me feel like I was not alone in my struggle. As humans we are constantly looking for ourselves in all shapes and forms, I seek to do that for others just as Jun did for me.

-Emily Amezuca

I have struggled with depression and social anxiety, conditions that worsen as I age. In this piece, I decided to represent all my emotions that I think the audience would be able to relate to, which is my goal as an artist. I credit my mother’s family with my ability to draw. Here, I chose paint as my medium, blending dark and yet warm colors to communicate different moods.  

The reason behind this art piece and why I’ve chosen to draw it the way I did is because I wasn’t able to just choose one emotion. I wanted to put everything I felt into it. In a way, I feel like I am swirling in a big tsunami of growth that I can’t get out of. A few years ago, my siblings passed away and I have felt guilty ever since.  I have had to live a role where I must be perfect. I can’t escape it and I’m sinking and drowning. At a younger age, I was diagnosed with severe depression and anxiety disorder, but my parents never seemed to pay attention to it. I tended to use my art as a source of comfort. Today I use it to experience joy and to balance out my mind because I can’t use words.   

My biggest inspiration is my mom.  She has been through everything with me and my art, seeing me progress and always supporting me. When I was at my lowest and felt like just giving up art, she pushed me to continue because she knows how passionate I am about it.

-Pazia Brown

I take a personal approach to the theme of deep emotion, drawing on personal experience. In my work, I use abstract and figurative images and symbolism to communicate my grief at the passing of my mother, Amber D. Cacho Beeson. My work also highlights a rather intimate moment that shaped my life. My work presents both retaliation against a particular person and insight for all those close to my mother and me. My work also highlights the impact her loss had on Bakersfield. During her public battle with her illness, I did most of the caregiving and learned how to use medical equipment at a young age because no one else took the initiative to do so. So, with her life in my hands, I dreaded the moment when she passed.

My work is also inspired by the melting images found in the work of Miloš Hronec and the graphic chaos found in the work of Jason Balducci.    

I hope viewers of my work come to understand the unendurable grief of losing a loved one

-Nicolas D. Cacho Beeson

My piece is based on a collage that symbolizes a feeling of lost time and regret. With the exhibition's concept being deep emotion, my painting utilizes imagery that shows a feeling of not having enough time and growing up too fast. Using oil paint and taking the base of the collage, this piece was pulled from an article about an autopsy of a 4-year-old girl who died ‘too young’. This overall sparked that idea. The feeling of this girl who had so much potential, yet ending up dying before she could read made me realize what I take for granted. It made me see that we often overlook things other people could only pray or hope for. This painting gives a deep sense of the concept of underestimating time.

-Allison Darke

I have created a visual representation of the most vital components of my identity within my piece titled, The Grotesque.  This small installation, composed mainly of a urethane resin bust on a wall mount, has visualized not only my growth as an artist, but also my experiences about the world around me.  In society, I have felt constrained as an individual, constantly harassed and bullied in school throughout my childhood for the way I portrayed myself.  After years of reflection, I can harness this frustration and vulnerability I carry as an inspiration, representing it as a monotonous and rough texture throughout my installation.  The term ‘grotesque’ has historically held a negative connotation within society often representing something that is either vulgar or frightening.  I have harnessed this stereotype within this piece to reflect my complexities evolving past the adversities of life to embrace the magnificence of my identity.  The viewer is subtly immersed in a small focal point of extreme fluorescent color found in the headspace of the sculpture.  It is through this one focal point that the audience can have a deeper connection with my piece beyond the negative expressions often portrayed on the outside.  The fluorescent aura upon my piece represents a freedom from that constraint and frustration, the true representation of my creative and mindful personality encouraged by my growth as an artist in the modern world.

-Francis Escudero 

Collage, my visual language that I have adopted in my work utilizes photographs, drawing, painting, and typography. In these pieces, I explore the overall feeling of emotional alienation and disconnection. I am often unable to explain how I feel and withdraw from my emotions; this has been my relationship with my feelings for as long as I can remember. Through art, I have been able to define how I feel without words. I achieve this using surrealism to show how distant my emotions feel from the world and people around me. By incorporating photos from my childhood through the present in my practice, my art is the way I to truly understand my emotions. 

Recent interest in the importance of mental health inspires me to continue to create art rooted in my own experiences without it feeling taboo. The intention is for my art to serve as a way for the viewer to find solace, finding their own inner beauty and peace while also learning to embrace pain and insecurities. I want people to be gentle with themselves and with the uncertainty of emotions. 

-Marley Frausto  

This piece is a deep dive into my personal feelings and overcoming suicidal tendencies. My ritual would be to cut, and then wash the crimson away. One-year ago was the last time I've ever done that, when my mother found the bloody tub with the pale pink water. They knew but they didn’t know how to help me. But when my mother found me, I saw the tears stain her cheeks, but all I could say was that I was sorry, seeing her pain was my willpower to stop. Though I overcame it, the scars remain and will last for a lifetime. I have learned to accept it and move on from that painful period. I still tell my mother I'm sorry to this day.

-Mattea Gonzalez 

My piece represents the complex duality of desperately trying to be a happy person, while surrounded by an unhappy world. This is a life-size self-portrait. Everything is real and dull, representing the harsh world around me. Then I have my world; my bubbly personality and tendency to daydream are a light in the darkness. I am glad to have utilized acrylic paint for this portion, as the bright colors depict my inner joy. Mostly I cope with the struggle to stay positive by focusing on my own, personal joy, as seen by the painting looking within. I also try to always find the metaphorical silver lining to every situation, therefore my painting (which I experienced various positive and negative emotions in the process of making) has a silver lining to it.

-Shay Lambie 

My artwork seeks to portray a feeling of serenity by utilizing nature to visually express emotion. I utilize deep blue tones to express tranquility complimented with colorful foliage and beaming sparkling rays of sunlight and vivacious sea life to express placidity and tranquility. By displaying a serene, submerged environment lush with vivacious colorful coral and dancing sea life which portrays emotion through color utilizing acrylic paints on a horizontally wide canvas and a dark frame. With this piece, I aspire to bring attention to wildlife and nature for its resplendency and call on society to realize the connection between humans and nature along with the eradication of environments. It represents my deep emotion of serenity that others who view my art may relate to. However, I invite others to understand that my art does not represent topics such as religion or politics due to the long-standing history of discord these subjects often carry.

-Eduardo Lopez 

There have been numerous moments in my life where I have experienced a sort of stillness and stress. The anticipation during these moments has inspired me to recreate my feelings in painting form. Similarly, the release of these emotions when I let go pertains to many emotions and as such, I’d like to express them. With the qualities of both oil and acrylic, using what I’ve learned from experimentation and surrealism, and a mix of visual stagnation and explosive brush strokes, I aim to accomplish this task. For piece one, The Bottled-Up Durian, I want to create a grayer more uncomfortable feeling of stillness before disaster, using a durian-headed character whose spikes take a new form in my second piece. For piece two, Release of the Psyche, I want to slice open the head and from it create streams and plumes of color and imagery to express the myriad emotions I have from letting go from euphoric, anger, melancholy, and so on. I want others to understand the emotions primarily, but as secondary goals I want people to understand a little bit more about me and my paintings.”

Experience is a virtue. I want people inside the moment to experience the frustration shared in a single expression. As an artist, my intention is to explore personal emotions through my work. Growing up, I was always surrounded by strong feelings which have heavily influenced my art. Memories and experiences play a huge role in my creative process, as I find them to be a rich source of raw emotions. For example, everyone experiences an overwhelming feeling of being frustrated, but how is that portrayed in art? Through my piece, I aim to capture and express these deep-rooted feelings, whether it be through different mediums or intricate details. My hope is that my work can serve as a reminder that emotions are a beautiful and essential part of life.

-Angela Sanchez

My work focuses on portraying those who have a special mark on my soul, and at the same time, I provide a platform for moments worth capturing. I think I have a good understanding of the range of emotions and I'm here to portray them. My artistic influences extend to painting, drawing, photography and poetry. I try to include a little bit of all my interests in my paintings. I have chosen to use warm and cold colors to better represent the feelings of the moment in the painting. You can see a couple looking into each other's eyes. In the painting, you can see two people “holding” each other, while one of them fades away. This painting depicts the grief of a breakup, which leaves a scar; a breakup in which you can consciously feel yourself falling apart as you watch the one you love with your soul walk away. By loving with your soul, you have made yourself susceptible to heartbreak, and my painting represents the price of loving the wrong person intensely, or perhaps the right person in the wrong moment. I paint because it makes me feel something and I enjoy being able to convey those feelings to others. I hope my audience becomes interested in exploring the feelings and meanings behind my paintings.

-Fernanda Segura Navarro 

I was inspired by the song “Lights Are On” by singer and songwriter Tom Rosenthal. In the song, he expresses the feeling of being emotionally abandoned and neglected in silence, just like the pandas in my piece. I'm a seventeen-year-old artist who wants nothing more than to connect with people through her art. I believe being human is such a beautiful thing, but we rarely ever talk about the pain that comes along with it. In this piece, I captured a specific moment everyone has faced at least once in their lives. The moment in which you’re surrounded by so much, yet you feel so helpless, angry, frustrated, scared, and so much loss. You’re frozen. There's a specific line in the song that I think a lot of people can relate to: “God stood me up, and I don’t know why.” That moment in which you wonder why such a horrible thing can happen to you. I like to think that the mother panda is wishing for a miracle. One that’ll at least make up for the tragedy that is unfolding right in front of her eyes, but no one comes. It's just her and her baby and the frustration, anger, loss, fear, and grief. She knows her world is caving in, but she stays put and shelters the only thing she deems worth saving—her last hope, her little light. A grief that's silent but weighs heavy on your shoulders. In this piece, I used acrylic paint, my love for music, and pandas to create art that is silent but as heavy as grief.

-Yasmin Tirado 

My painting portrays envy by featuring a person peeking outside of a doorway looking outwards at a group of friends playing. I used a wood panel as my canvas, oil paints and pastels to create texture. This scene appeals to me because it communicates how I felt when I was growing up, feeling left out and envious of people who made friends quickly. My art relates to the art of my contemporaries by cantering around deep emotions. I want people to look at my work and understand children have complicated emotions that are not able to vocalize so they keep quiet and hold their feelings inside.

-Bella Velasquez 

I use clay to embody the consuming nature of the ocean. I sculpt the clay however it may flow because water is the element of change. Clay allows me to incorporate textures that other mediums don’t allow. The ocean heavily influenced my work because of its duality. It is terrifying and beautiful. Waves whisper and roar, rising and crashing. Life can often feel like the ocean. Drowning is no stranger to me; and yet, amongst life’s relentless waves I reach out. I reach out because there is one thing the ocean does not have. Hope. Though waves may crash, and the depths consume, hope is never far from reach.

-Madeline Wells

I created a piece that portrays a deep sense of love. An old couple is dancing in front of a mirror. The reflection in the mirror is that of a young couple symbolizing that their love is still young, and they see their relationship with as much beauty there was, and still is, even though they have aged. The woman/man sees their partner as beautiful/handsome as they were when they were young. This piece is reminiscent of the kind of love we all seek to have.  I want the love that lasts forever even when I’m old and wrinkly and losing my features. I still want my husband to see me as beautiful as I was when I was young. I feel as if this correlates to the artists of the world and this program because I feel like everyone wants to be loved, whether that’s in a friendship, relationship, parents, grandparents, etc. everyone wants to be wanted and thought of.  I was particularly inspired by Fauvism specifically because this type of art style uses color to portray emotion. For example, oranges, yellows and reds portray their passionate emotions towards each other and how I see love from my perspective, love is enjoyable. As for the background, I use colors like black and white to show how the couple only sees each other as their “world of color” and material objects don’t matter. All they need is each other to be happy and that’s how life should be, happiness shouldn’t come from materialistic objects, it should come from human connection.

-Ashley White