In September of 2024, I was given the opportunity to create my first ever visual series for my graduation show. The result was Sired By A Stranger.
What’s it about?
Sired By A Stranger is about the estranged relationship between me and my dad and how that perceived abandonment impacted me. It’s a continuous journey of trying to understand and come to terms with my father walking out on my brother and I eighteen years ago. I’ve had to deal with the anger and envy at the sight of children with their fathers, the resentment I felt when other would assume I needed to keep in touch with him, and ultimately, the fact that I will never get a concrete answer to one burning question: “Why?”. It’s grief, it’s heartbreaking, and I decided to put it to canvas.
Inspired by songs such as Stromae’s Papapoutai, Tyler The Creator’s Like Him, along with artists like Steve Locke and Emily Carr, I chose to recreate baby photos of me and my dad; all moments I cannot recall or reminisce. How do you remember someone you can’t recognize? In my interpretation, you don’t. They just become a void in your heart and in your mind where a face should be- an emptiness that could never be filled. In a way, I’m mourning the loss of my dad’s presence and unfortunately, I always will be. Accompanying this visual series is a playlist you can click to your right to access on YouTube; viewers at the exhibition were invited to scan the available qr code and listen to any of the songs listed as they studied the works.
The series was made using acrylic paint and collage by taking sections of the original photos and creating a pattern from them on 12x12” canvases, framed with box frames and 10x10” photo mats for border.
Where it started:
Initially, I had no clue what I wanted the concept to be for the graduation show. One idea I had was illustrating various animals being good fathers to their babies, with the exception being humanity, represented by my dad. However, this idea didn’t stick and so, I went and sought advice from my professor and program director, JoAnn Purcell. That’s where she gave me the idea to instead illustrate moments of me and my dad together from when I was a baby, with the twist being his face was left un painted to signify his absence in my life. This worked phenomenally to bridge the missing gap I had with my initial concept, so I went forward with the suggestion, resulting in the works you see now.
The Process
In order to ensure my recreations would be as close to the original paintings as possible, I created tiles out of the photos and drew grids on each one for their respective canvases. Then, I turned to artists like Emily Carr and Paul Gauguin for colour inspiration, deciding on a primarily teal, navy, and brown colour scheme for the backgrounds and warm skin tones for my subjects.
