Anticipation: A Senior Explorations Amplified Piece by Rachel Uyeda (2014)

I chose the prompt, Anticipation, because I felt that the concept best represented my feelings and emotions of the time at which I created the art. Anticipation thrives in the gray area of what we know and what we don't. I find anticipation to be useless in most occasions, and ironically, an inevitable reaction to most occurrences. Anticipation is a reaction of both our ability to instantaneously perceive and our desire to know what's coming next. For instance, the words in the piece ''Fight or Flight'' give the viewer a sense of what I was thinking as the artist. They can imagine possible narratives for the story I tried to tell. Overall, I wanted to create a piece that was both explicit and implicit in its meaning, reliant on both the artist and the viewer to tell a story as complex as the many lines that cover the tree.

To start the piece I first used watercolor on paper canvas. I drew a tree to start, and then soon realized that the tree could be converted into a face, with other natural elements comprising the eyes, nose, and lips. I scanned this image into the computer and uploaded it to Adobe Photoshop, where I then erased everything except for the tree, my focal point. I then added a texture filter, experimented with a new technique, and added the words. I opted for a large yellow circle because I felt that the image needed focusing. The final component I added was the background of the overall photo, that I decided to add texture to, as well as color with a slightly translucent pink.