Guilt: A Junior Self-Portrait Diptych by Niamh McLoughlin (2013)

The statement for my diptych is ''Guilt is like a wall in your brain, it keeps you from moving forward.'' The picture on the left shows a girl with her head hitting a fence and her hands grasping onto the fence. This is symbolizing the struggle in moving forward when your past may affect your future. The fence shows how there’s no way to break through and it shows how she is almost locked in her head. The colors are warm and sunlight coming in on the top right corner all shows the hope she still carries in moving forward.

My right picture is obviously a street with a car in the middle further down. The idea of the street connects to my poem and how ''life is a road.'' The road is long to show how much there is to look forward to. The two pictures correlate because I tried placing them in a way to show that the girl is pushing herself away from her future, symbolized by the fence, but she wishes to be able to walk down the ''road of life'' which is why she’s grasping onto the fence.

These images go together because the left one is showing how the girl is looking in her future and the road on the right picture is her future. My main idea is to never look back which is why you can’t see much in the background of the picture on the left. It’s showing that guilt shouldn’t stop you from walking down your road of life.