Jasmine Duong

When we are awake, where do our emotions go? Do the dreams that bring us the utmost happiness or conjure up our utmost terrors hold a droplet of truth? In the darkness our feelings condense to create shapes and forms of color to dance in the wonderful world of our consciousness. To me building worlds, landscapes, poems, and all in all making art is building a place where our emotions can reside. Where it can be encapsulated and held to be steeped in, or coaxed out in the stories long forgotten by the day to day life. What is life if not with the things we can experience and feel, but can not see. The bubbles of given definition that include love, pressure, connection, and etc. I mean what is love? Is it the aura our minds swim in or is it hormones that course through our veins? What is addiction? Is it the little voice that calls to us for the sake of happiness or the urge we get that drives us into deep delirium? I create homes for the invisible clouds that blind, guide, torment, and bind us to live in.

Tethered was an idea long held within me, trapped in my brain from procrastination and life. It was conjured in a time of great mental hardship, but painted during a point in my life where I was happier. The dichotomy created can not be explained in words, but felt through the moment it creates through strokes of paint. I have not fully comprehended what this piece means to me. What does it mean to You?