How do you capture a moment in time, how do you capture a moment in someone's life? The reference image I used from this was one that my mother had taken of her when she was in middle school and very into dance. It was important to me because it incorporated my favorite person at an age that we have now both experienced in very different ways. I’m trying to capture moments of big change in a person's life, so that hopefully whoever looks at this portfolio after its completion can see themselves and their life events reflected in it. In particular, I wanted to convey a young woman’s life events, a lot of which has to do with how society views them, what they are affected by, what they are told to find important, and what they actually value/feel changed by. That is part of the reason why I chose to paint this picture featuring young dancers, as I feel like it can symbolize the way women have to perform or live to entertain others. While I cannot fully speak for my mother, the amount of responsibility she has had to bear as the oldest child with younger siblings to take care of is clear to me, and I wanted to portray the delicate femininity expected of women, when there is often more beneath the surface. I’ve been experimenting with using nontraditional colors in my underpainting, allowing these colors to shine through to the outside of the painting and incorporating them generally. I don’t want to paint hyper realistic paintings, I want to create interesting and creative pieces that utilize ideas that might be a tad unconventional. I want to paint the world the way I see it at its most beautiful, which isn’t always rigid and straightforward, I want to show movement and the unique ways color, light, and objects interact. I’m trying to mix the physical with the emotional. This piece was heavily inspired by Berthe Morisot, who has  beautiful impressionist style paintings, often from a young woman’s perspective. I find her art beautiful, but  not radical or really saying anything I particularly agree with. She is someone I take inspiration from stylistically, but not subject wise. This piece was a learning curve, as it was quite a bit smaller and daintier than most of mine, it was quite a bit more controlled, but that did lend itself to a more impressionist style like hers which I have always wanted to attempt. This one also incorporates many soft fabrics that she often paints that I had not before.