FLOWING EMOTIONS
ZIELSCHMERZ
The exhilarating dread of finally pursuing a lifelong dream. 18 x 12 inches |
OPIA
The ambiguous intensity of looking someone in the eye, which can feel simultaneously invasive and vulnerable – their pupils glittering, bottomless and opaque – as if you were peering through a hole in the door of a house, able to tell that there’s someone standing there, but unable to tell if you’re looking in or looking out. 18 x 12 inches |
MIMEOMIA
The frustration of knowing how easily you fit into a stereotype, even if you never intended to, even if it's unfair, even if everyone else feels the same way. 12 x 9 inches |
PARO
The feeling that no matter what you do is always somehow wrong—that any attempt to make your way comfortably through the world will only end up crossing some invisible taboo—as if there’s some obvious way forward that everybody else can see but you. 12 x 9 inches |
KARIOSCLEROSIS
The moment you realize that you’re currently happy – consciously trying to savor the feeling which prompts your intellect to identify it, pick it apart and put it in context, where it will slowly dissolve until it's little more than an aftertaste. 18 x 12 inches |
WALDOSIA
A condition characterized by scanning faces in a crowd looking for a specific person who would have no reason to be there, which is your brains ay of checking ot see whether they’re still in your life, subconsciously eating/getting? It’s emotional pockets before it leaves for the day. 18 x 12 inches |
CATROPRIC TRISTESSE
The sadness that you’ll never really know what other people think of you, whether good, bad or if at all. 15 x 12 inches |
LIBEROSIS
The desire to care less about things—to loosen your grip on your life. 15 x 12 inches |
ELLIPSIM
A sense of sadness one experiences when realizing that one won't live to see the future. 18 x 12 inches |
NIGHTHAWK
A recurring thought that only seems to strike you late at night—an overdue task, a nagging guilt, a looming and shapeless future—that circles high overhead during the day, that pecks at the back of your mind while you try to sleep, that you can successfully ignore for weeks, only to feel its presence hovering. 18 x 12 inches |
MAUERBAUERTRAURIGKEIT
The inexplicable urge to push people away, even close friends who you really like—as if all your social tastebuds suddenly went numb, leaving you unable to distinguish cheap politeness from the taste of genuine affection. 24 x 18 inches |
RIGOR SAMSA
A kind of psychological exoskeleton that can protect you from pain and contain your anxieties, but always ends up cracking under pressure or hollowed out by time—and will keep growing back again and again, until you develop a more sophisticated emotional structure, held up by a strong and flexible spine. 24 x 18 inches |
SONDER
The realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own—populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, worries and inherited craziness—an epic story that continues invisibly around you like an anthill sprawling deep underground, with elaborate passageways to thousands of other lives that you’ll never know existed, in which you might appear only once, as an extra sipping coffee in the background, as a blur of traffic passing on the highway, as a lighted window at dusk.
24 x 18 inches
The realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own—populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, worries and inherited craziness—an epic story that continues invisibly around you like an anthill sprawling deep underground, with elaborate passageways to thousands of other lives that you’ll never know existed, in which you might appear only once, as an extra sipping coffee in the background, as a blur of traffic passing on the highway, as a lighted window at dusk.
24 x 18 inches
ARTIST STATEMENT + BIO
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A lot of my art is focused on people's faces and what emotion they are currently frozen in. Most of the time I like to paint monotone side profiles or ¾ side profiles to try and capture emotion. The way humans express emotions and what they look like when they do so is very interesting to me. It's all so dynamic yet we all know what emotion that person is showing. Another great thing about human faces is that nobody looks the same and I can add my own artistic style like more wrinkles or a curved nose.
I’ve always been interested in the way people look from random people on the street, to celebrities. It's just whoever I see that interests me as I embrace my voyeuristic tendencies. Sometimes I stare at people not to be rude but so that I can remember what they looked like in order to draw them. I think live references of people and drawing from observation help me become a better artist. But at the same time it is very tricky to make a drawing look like someone and I often fixate on one detail, but fixating on small details also helps me realize that you can't get everything right, and in a way that helps me let go of some of that stress. I have been drawing people's "true colors" lately. I get inspiration from the authenticity in people I see around me and then draw and paint them in their genuine color - that I think best suits them and that also contradicts what emotion they are showing. People's emotions have depth and are more than what we see on the surface. I want to show everyone that sometimes you don't know what's going on inside someone's head, they can look happy but they might be sad, angry, depressed, we never know but I want to try and display that with my art. I usually use acrylic paint, but the artwork I created for this series has all been done with watercolor paint. I believe that it's easier to paint with watercolor and I can layer the same colors and see the difference between coats of hues, in the same sense people layer their emotions too . And I can also “erase” watercolor and that makes it a lot easier because I'm not going to get everything right. Nobody will! Sources + Inspiration:
Words For Emotions You’ve Felt, But Couldn’t Explain We feel more than we have the language to articulate and express, which is in itself profoundly frustrating. People work through emotions by being able to identify them and use them as signals. A lot of the time, we’re left in the dark. Enter the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, the brainchild of writer John Koenig, that defines neologisms for emotions that do not have a descriptive term and who is here to give you words for the feelings you may not have even known you were having.
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Olivia Keiderling is a junior who enjoys painting, sculpting, and several other hands on activities. She mostly focuses on realism and the human form, although landscapes, nature, and flowers are another interest within her art. Some things Olivia loves is listening to music, watching movies, learning about history, fashion, and looking at old pictures. Olivia wants to eventually go to Gettysburg college and join the military to become a medic.
Materials used in series: watercolor paint, pencil, and acrylic paint. |
Mimeomia detail