Andrea Eskelin

This work represents an artistic interpretation of university life and the social construct surrounding higher education. It summarizes the perception of one individual visually portraying emotions involved in being torn between life altering choices. What major do I choose? Can I make art and pursue music? Students continuously live with parents’, teachers’, peers’, and others’ ideas and persuasions about what is best for them. Finding the answers for themselves and ultimately making choices that shape each student as an individual is the challenge.

For me, these three paintings exist as a narrative of my higher education experience. Diminished represents the emotion of feeling stationary and hopeless. Suspended depicts the stage of searching freely and the guise of persuasion, and To Play in the Evening illustrates wonder and contentment. I am developing an understanding of these stages as I make choices regarding my education. This work acts to continuously remind myself not to be consumed by stages in this cycle.