Mira Kheyman | Painting- Series

Mira Kheyman

New York

Series

These paintings are works that I have done in themes.

Hindsight

The question, “Who are you?” is one I excessively ponder. When I think about my life and who I am, the cultural details come to the forefront of my mind, but as I dig deeper into the details which make me an individual, it is hard to ignore the fact that for over a decade of my young life depression immensely contributed to who and why I am the way I am. My art is a complete parallel to the pains, joys, and experiences I have endured. With my painting series I am trying to depict the feelings that nobody sees, memory loss, and mental insecurity. This series is about myself, my experience with mental anguish, and my way of saying the words I wish someone told me when I was younger.

My goal is to share a sliver of my personal experiences with depression, a war I have been fighting for years. The mental battles fought every day are not always physically manifesting themselves for the world to see and a very limited number of people know what I constantly deal with. We are the way we are for a multitude reasons and perhaps battling depression from the ripe age of 11 has paved the way for my experiences and decisions. I am going to pursue art therapy as it is the field which would allow my fascination with psychology as well as art to continue to flourish. My own artwork is something I do not plan to give up, but a life path I plan to walk alongside helping others through artistic expression.

Puzzles

Puzzles is a series of paintings in which I explored a more abstract mark-making in combination with representational imagery. For this series, I incorporated old, personal photographs and focused on the relationships between the people in the photographs. Using fluorescent oil sticks, I drew out my images and worked with the shapes that were formed (and left) in the sketching process. The bright colors were meant to resemble childhood and the scribble drawings that children often do.

Finding My Madame X

Finding My Madame X is a triptych greatly inspired by John Singer Sargent's infamous Madame X painting which is on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. This piece started off as a four painting series about desire but through the process, I discovered my desire to explore very subtle ways of displaying sexiness, vulnerability, and longing. This piece is symbolic of the tough journey I went through to overcome major mishaps and traumatic times in my life because it was such a struggle to get this painting to this final state.

Bundled

Bundled is a collection of paintings that were based on photos from my childhood. I was inspired by the ridiculous outfits that my parents bundled me in and just how much of my early life I have forgotten. I believe it is important sometimes to appreciate the moment rather than trying to photograph it to appreciate it later, but in the same breath I can say that having photographs for your memory to fall back on makes the inevitable forgetting a little bit easier to swallow. When I was only a couple years old, my parents would occasionally take me and my older brother to Prospect Park to feed the ducks. I have combined the feelings memories give with the motifs of the ducks, the bulky outfits I was forced to wear, and imagery from old photographs to create each painting.

Verrazano Bridge

Verrazano Bridge is a three-piece series of studies depicting Brooklyn's Verrazano Bridge at different times of the day.

Whole

Whole is a painting composed of 27 small canvases. The idea behind this piece was to depict how every person is made up of little pieces. Throughout our lives, we meet people and go through experiences that shape us. Events and tragedies sometimes make us feel like we are falling apart... like we are no longer, and never will be, whole again. When we are by ourselves, we are stripped of all the unnecessary actions that we make on a daily basis to appeal to certain people. We do not have to pretend that we are okay when we are tired, stressed, and drained. Ultimately we can not hide from ourselves or from the harsh truths that some of us are not as whole as we lead others to believe.

Our favorite songs, events, experiences, hobbies, quotations, books, artworks, objects, etc, are all intricately pieced together to create our souls and bodies, along with the tragedies that we faced, the fears that we never conquered, and the anguishes that we endured.