EVELYN HIPEL

Sunken (2023)
Evelyn Hipel, 16, Waterloo Collegiate Institute
(watercolour and acrylic on watercolour paper)

This painting was created from the prompt “The Nature of Things”. I wanted to explore human nature, more specifically the mind and emotions, and some of my own struggles with depression and anxiety. For me (and many others) painting is a way to help deal with my emotions, so I wanted to find a way to get my emotions on the page. I wanted to show the feeling of darkness, helplessness and sometimes numbness that comes with depression by making the background and water quite dark, and the expression on the face mostly unemotional or unaffected. The hair swirling around in the water and having the person half under the water was done to try and show how it feels when your mind is swirling with uncontrollable thoughts that are super overwhelming, like “drowning in your thoughts.” Mostly I created a piece that means something to me, that I enjoy visually and represents a part of me I don’t often share, as well as explore human nature - the nature of things