Hannah Midkiff Photography “Unfinished Portrait” by Bonnie Gentry
I’ve always been what I would consider a “creative spirit.”
I remember watching the movie “Miss Potter” in 2006 after growing up on the Flopsy, Mopsey, Cottontail, and Peter gang. I came home and asked for a watercolor palette and brushes. I had been writing stories before 8 years old, but I decided it was time for illustrations bound up in ribbons. Some time ago I lost that. All of those illustrations never felt beautiful or worth showcasing.
Hannah Midkiff Photography
Coming home from school after Covid-19 I felt I needed to create something with my hands. That need or desire to make something beautiful, not perfect, just beautiful. So when my mom asked if I wanted to do a “10 and up” art camp with my little brother, I thought why not!
Painting is like creating music but instead of sounds and timbre colors, you have a blank canvas to create with. I stepped away from each class seeing colors and swatches that I wanted to put on the canvas. I also felt relieved when painting because there was nothing that had to be perfect about it. In fact, the imperfections in the strokes were what made the art. There’s nothing to draw your attention in a perfect painting, but the small quirks catch your eye. It’s given me a new avenue to express myself and create.
“Creativity is the way I share my soul with the world.”
It brings out the child in me. You can’t use up creativity, but I have found myself getting burnt out on other mediums of art after being school. I felt a new surge of energy in a different art form.
One of the paintings I made this week was an abstract portrait I titled, “Unfinished Portrait.” We were told do a self portrait, like a cartoon and not representational like a photograph. I took this to a different level by incorporating nonrepresentational colors and shadows. It was expressional but other than my eyes, most of it wasn’t realistic. Sometimes I feel like that’s how we look at ourselves. Like something unfinished but not as it truly is. We don’t want to take deeper look at ourselves and see things clearly in ourselves. We often rely on other people’s reflections of us or who they say we are and we paint a portrait of ourselves based on that. I did my best to make the eyes realistic because that’s the only window I have into the world and it’s how we see truth. I call it “unfinished” because I’m still working on myself and seeing who I really am and not just a representation of who others say I am.
Hannah Midkff Photography