Artist Statement
“Special Moments” depicts sharing some special and important moments in my life featuring four of my grandparents. At the beginning of this semester my grandmother passed away. So, to commemorate her, along with my other grandparents, I decided to portray some of my favourite memories with them when I was growing up. The first image depicts one of my early memories. It has my Saba (grandfather) holding me as a young child. We are in his backyard picking raspberries off of his raspberry bush. This is one of the few memories I have with him because a couple years later he got Alzheimer’s and passed away. So, this memory is very special to me, remembering him when he was happy and lively. The second image depicts a memory with me and my Buba (grandmother). She lived on Eglington for many years so when I would visit, we would walk up the street over to the ice cream shop and grab a scoop or two of ice cream. She always loved her sweets so much. The third piece is with myself and my Zadie (grandfather). When I would have the day off school growing up, he would always be in charge of watching me. Almost every time he would take me to this candy store called “John Vince”. We would go and I would get all the candy I wanted. He would also always go and grab a bag of chocolate covered raisins for me and my sister. He would even count them to make sure it was equal for us. The last piece is one of my most recent memories of myself and my Bubie (grandmother). We like to sort through photos when we have time off of school and work. We will sit for hours and she will tell me who people are and stories about these pictures. She likes telling me about her memories going to Jackson Lake as a child with my great grandparents and showing me photos from the trip she took with my dad, Zadie and uncle to Disney when my dad caught chicken pocks.
This series took inspiration from all of my favourite art books. My art books inspire most of my art as I am going into concept art and visual development. Working in the visual development field, I work mainly in digital medium, including Photoshop and Illustrator. For these illustrations, I wanted a style that would be able to capture the feel and the love for these memories. I made the drawings digitally to be able to bring a nice glow into each one and have the drawings thoroughly capture these memories and moments I cherish so much.