RANDY LETTENBAUER

Lost to Time (2023)
Randy Lettenbauer, 16, Kitchener-Waterloo Collegiate and Vocational School
(digital mixed media)

My surrealist piece was partially inspired by Max Ernst’s “Montrant à une jeune fille la tête de son père”, taking inspiration from his use of colour and saturation. The piece is somewhat of a landscape, while still focusing on a subject, that being the lightbulb in the middle. The style that it is created in is a realistic, almost painted style, meant to emulate the surrealist pieces of the past, which often used oil paints.

Principles of art that I have used are colour, repetition, and texture. I made a point of not having too much saturation, and having the light feel like it was fading by including the gradual transition to black and white. I included glowing yellow and green orbs, not only to give the piece some more light, but also to show fading hopes for the future, with the piece being about Covid and such. Furthermore, I added a worn looking texture to the lightbulb itself, in order to make it look more damaged. The idea behind this piece is that the lightbulb with the person's face inside represents their mental headspace, now broken with the arrival of the Covid-19 pandemic, the shards taking shapes of what was no longer possible in the midst of it all. Eating out at restaurants. Spending time with friends. Actually being at school. The person's hope fading into the darkness. Hopes left out in the open, left to blow away with the sands of time.