As I was applying to NYU Tisch as a Collaborative Arts student (multimedia major), all students were required to submit a portfolio. Part of the portfolio was to create ‘something new’:
The prompt was:
To create an original piece that (re)presents these words COINCIDENCE / LOVE / DECAY in any medium.
My piece:
A visit to this man - ‘Badawi’, making a quick portrait of him, the coincidence that brought him to open his shop, about our decaying country, Lebanon, and about his love for his work and Lebanon nonetheless.
My creative process:
One’s creative process can have a multitude of starting points. For me, after thinking very hard for an answer to this prompt, I decided to start by looking at one of the words only. The word that evoked a visual image as I thought of it was ‘decay’: the image of rotten metal, or wrinkly skin. So I decided to paint a rotten chair, and as I finished this painting, my mind sparked: I saw Badawi, the neighborhood shopkeeper sitting on his chair outside of his shop, waiting for customers.
shot on iPhone
Process: Decaying Chair - Inspiration (Watercolor, Pastels)
