Jade Newsome
California College of the Arts

Art statement:

All my life it feels like I have been living a fake life like I was born into the wrong body. This has created a tension that drives my creative process. This tension fueled my series of art pieces focused on human sin which is seen in black and white, just like race and gender. My series shows that greed, envy, sloth, and other sins can be enchanting, or beautiful, or frightening. I have never really found anything to free myself of this feeling of being imprisoned by peoples’ ideas of who I am, but I am constantly struggling to come to terms with myself as a person and an artist. I feel that my art is helping to move me towards completely accepting my inner tension, instead of letting it go. This comes through in my series on human sin when the angel figures come to life. They are not your normal perfect angels with beautiful wings; they are imperfect and damaged angels, and yet, they are whole. I want my art to show that perfection does not have to be a goal. The more I learn to accept myself and the more I am in community with other creative people, the more my art will reflect this imperfect world.

Chaos is one of several pieces in my Human Sin Series which focuses on creating characters who represent specific sins or imperfections. I wanted to create characters who embody certain feelings but defies any labels. I researched and found that in Greek mythology, Chaos is described as the first created being who is later divided into multiple gods. This is reflected in the face of Chaos which appears to be multiplying right before your eyes. Parts of his being seem to be breaking off and forming new beings.  It makes me wonder if I met chaos or experienced it. Chaos was created using Prisma color pencils and watercolors which allowed me to give a definite outline of the character while the watercolor allows fluidity and movement. I also found out that in physics, Chaos means the formless matter supposed to have existed before the creation of the universe. This is reflected in the character’s movement on the paper and the defiance of labels since it existed before creation. When I asked myself
the question what I would change, if anything, about this piece I ended up creating Chaos II.