Austin Lubetkin
FEELING SERIES 1
IMAGE DESCRIPTION: A woman with a round face, thick eye-shadow, and blue-brown eyes faces the camera. She is naked except for a swirl of multi-colors that covers her skin and often takes the form of butterflies and flowers. The background of the image, while still colorful, is a little paler and more subdued. It is mostly lilac on the left and sea-green on the right. Lines of black paint drip in front of the woman’s face or surround and emphasize her eyes.
FEELING SERIES 2
IMAGE DESCRIPTION: Feeling 2: This similar image is made paler through white lines and lighter colors. As a result, the green-brown background is darker than the young woman who dominates the image. Spotted patterns made with black paint appear at the middle left and top right of the image.
FEELING SERIES 3
IMAGE DESCRIPTION: This image is both warm and pale because of the woman’s tanned skin, the multicolored flowers, and the blue-green background that surrounds her. Although most of the woman’s hair is still multicolored, viewers will catch glimpses of blond hair, dark roots, and dark eyebrows beneath the streaks of color. The black paint appears only as a splotch beside the woman’s right eye and as a symmetrical pattern (which resembles an inverted triangle with lines) on the right side of the image.
Artist statement:
This series is all about feeling and uses Rorschachs to portray feelings of the body, pain, and metamorphosis combined with experiential portraits with colors inspired by my synesthesia that mixes emotions and colors. Recently my mother became blind. My art has always helped me process my emotions and I started as an artist doing art therapy with my mother. It was not my conscious intention making the series but when my mother saw this series when I finished it she told me it looked similar to how her recent blindness appeared to her. My work uses bright vibrant rainbow colors to express life, emotion, and energy. They originate from synesthesia, where I see my emotions as colors around me. Many people temporarily experience synesthesia when they take LSD, but a select few people are born with it. These include many famous artists like Edvard Munch who painted “The Scream” and similarly saw his emotions as colors.