Going into this piece, I knew I wanted every aspect of the completed piece to have a purpose on why it is there. The purpose for this piece was to use it as a representation for a small part of my anxiety disorder. I often find it harder some days to get up out of bed in the morning but the first thing I do when I can manage to get a start to my day is a mirror. This first step often sets me back a little because the anxious thoughts flood in while I’m looking in a mirror so I wanted to create a calming element to add to a mirror, in a way to sort of elevate that feeling slightly. For me greens and neutral colors are calming, in my mind so I decided to use various shades of green to created a relaxing pattern that would be seen while looking through the mirror. I also added paintings of lavender plants due to their calming ability from their scent. I also stuck on small pieces of mirrors and clear mosaic crystals to mimic broken glass in a way that anxiety often leaves me feeling broken yet they are pasted on a whole mirror to represent that even though you feel broken you are still a whole. For the edges I used gold foil paint to bring light to the fact that many people with anxiety put on this outer layer where they pretend to be ok but really are not I also added a saying I tell myself a lot when I’m overly anxious saying “This Too Shall Pass” meaning even though right now it seems like everything is really bad it will eventually pass like everything else has in the past. After creating this piece, I feel like I was able to portray the meaning how I wanted to and it turned out how I had expected it to. The only problems I had faced when creating this piece was that I didn’t take in account how the paint would appear on the mirror and it was a little more translucent that I had hoped but it was an easy fix with just a few more layers of paint. This piece goes with a series of mixed media pieces I have created revolving around how my anxiety and ADHD affects me and ways to break the stigma against it.
