I’d like to say my art style is stylized illustration, and that there will never be a piece of mine without black in it. I find most of my inspiration for creating works from music, as I spend almost all of my waking minutes listening to beautiful and powerful tunes. Other major sources of inspiration include video games and animation shows — I can’t conceal my need to fuse my hobbies and passions together whenever I can. However, that is not the central concept of this year’s portfolio, even though I would’ve liked it to be so.   

Everyone has their own internal and external troubles. I certainly have my fair share of both. Though, sometimes I feel like society forgets that kids and adults alike can have the same mental struggles. We all question our existence, our morals, beliefs, virtues. I had my first existential crisis when I was around four or five, crying in the shower about how scary death was. It’s rough and it’s not a phase. 

Through this year’s portfolio, I wanted to present that even a child can understand and undergo such mental crises in their day to day lives. I wanted to provide my idea of visual depictions of different crises as well, as it is much harder to picture what a mental degradation looks like than a physical struggle.