In one of my first art classes back during my time at DigiPen, one of the required books we had to read through had this certain painting. Now, it was nothing special, it was just some boats on water. Rather rough. Turns out, it was created by a man named Alfred Wallis. Wallis was a retired fisherman who took up painting at the age of 70 “for company” after his wife died. He used leftover ship paint with crayons on pieces of cardboard boxes for his work.
This man died in 1942, across the ocean from me. Out of some quirk, I see a piece of his in a book, making enough of an impression on me to look up more about him. From what I can read of Wallis, he started creating art to fill a hole, something just for him. There wasn’t too much care in being right or wrong in what he did, just that he DID.
How do we lose that? If you ask a child if they like to draw, they’ll invariably say “yes.” If you ask in adult if they like to draw, how FEW of them will say “yes?” And I can just guess that the reason is because they think they CAN’T or that it’s just not worthwhile.
I think… I think we have to stop losing the feeling that we can create art. Stop letting the pressure and the critique and the attention and the comparisons get to us. Let’s just make things, make them as best we can, and improve ourselves in whatever way we wish to. You have NO IDEA who you are impacting with what you create, don’t lessen that impact by diminishing yourself.
And that’s the hardest thing to do. But whenever I start in on that downward spiral, I try to think of Alfred Wallis again.
Asking For It: 6%
It is estimated that only 6% of rapes and sexual assaults are actually reported, which is a frightfully low number. I have started a new project aiming to explore the reasons behind this, which started from the #ididnotreport hashtag on twitter - where survivors or rape/sexual abuse tell of their numerous reasons why they didn’t report it to anyone. This is the first series of images - numerous things that victims are told time and time again whenever they do actually report their abuse to someone - be it a friend, parent, family member, stranger or the authorities. We live in a society of rape culture where the victim is almost constantly blamed - told that they drank too much, wore too little, were out too late by themselves, flirted too much, are too “slutty”, are too “frigid”, are making a big deal out of “nothing”, the rapist was their partner so it obviously wasn’t rape because you can’t be raped by someone you’re in a relationship with. The things that victims constantly get told by the media, the people they know, rape “jokes”, songs, the authorities…they are painted on them so that they can never forget. To remind them that it is all “their fault” - if they hadn’t gone there/drank alcohol/wore that skirt/flirted etc, it wouldn’t have happened. Obviously.
I intend to expand on this series of photographs in the near future, and there is a lot more to come from this project, this is only the very starting point. My aim is to bring the idea of rape culture, slut-shaming, and victim-blaming to the attention of more people. To try and examine why 94% of rapes/assaults/abuse are never reported to the police, and to try and make that number decrease.
this is an amazing project because it is impossible to ignore. you are looking at the thing you see the most and confront first on a person: their face. more than their face though, their mind and their emotions.
Reblog forever. That is all.
