Laughing

This series is simply about laughing. The past few months have been especially difficult for me and I was lacking any kind of joy. As things seemed to stay that way, I was worried that I wouldn’t feel that kind of obnoxious happiness again. I’ve had to learn that happiness is a choice and not always something that comes naturally, and I’ve been working on creating laughter rather than waiting for it. I was inspired to make this series in particular when I was looking through photos and found outtakes a friend had taken of me laughing when I was supposed to be posing for a serious photo. I really liked the idea that I had a photo of myself feeling a pure kind of joy, and I wanted to immortalize that. After painting three of myself, I wanted to do more. I sat down with my friends and had a conversation with them with a camera on them, and used the clips of them laughing as the basis for the rest of my paintings. 

My approach for these paintings was to make them as genuine as possible. I painted them in one sitting and had a goal for when the painting would be done so I wouldn’t overwork it. I experimented throughout this series with color, but I consistently tried to keep the brushwork loose to match the authentic, in the moment idea of the series. There’s nothing much deeper behind the paintings besides capturing a moment of pure joy, and I only hope the viewer walks away remembering what it’s like to feel that.