Love?
This art piece, “Love?” is about love, but not true love, it’s about the misconceptions of love. At least from my experience with ‘love’ or watching others fall ‘in love’ in my millennial generation, “love” isn’t really love at all. Yes, sometimes people seem to get lucky and find the one, but overall, our generation's view of love has been skewed out of proportion.
Of course, receiving material gifts are nice, things like flowers and jewelry show sentiment. However, I know so many girls who ‘love’ guys because they buy her expensive things. The necklaces on the top left, the flowers throughout the image and the crystals on the bottom of the image all try to illustrate this idea of materialistic love. Also, the skeleton-hand holding the rose on the bottom left is meant to portray a person who is giving the materialistic gifts because that's all they know. They've been waiting so long for true love by providing materialistic gifts that now they are just skeletons.
The body and lips on the middle bottom of the page show lust, not love, just the want for sexual pleasure and not true intimate experiences of love. Similarly, the girl hugging the devil shows someone who's completely blindsided in a relationship and doesn't know real love from fake. The girl falling into a deep hole on the middle right of the page shows the feelings of unrequited love. The marijuana and other drugs like the pill with hearts spilling out explimflies a substitute for love; what one may resort to in situations of unrequited love. Similarly, the heart with many little hearts surrounding it shows the love that is unrequited and slowing dissipating and the broken hearts are pretty clear showing the effects of misconceived love.
The hand with the snake and the girl with the flame glasses shows someone who is just in a relationship for the thrill. Similarly, the eyes on the bottom left show that love can be untrue and agitating. The moon phases on the top and little stars illustrate one who believes so much in astrology and fate that they are willing to take those answers for true love. Finally, the staircase leading to a black hole illustrates the steps in a relationship which eventually lead to a pretty desolate, monotonous relationship if there is no real love. Furthermore, I drew this piece with the word love in bright colors because love seems good, colorful, and new at first, however, all the things that are packaged with this word like heartbreak, materialistic love, fake love, love for the wrong reasons, lust, and misguided love are in black pen, a color that is associated with darkness.
I was inspired by my friend's album which is about his experiences with a love that could never work out and the things he used to cope with unrequited love. He also wrote about materialistic forms of love in our current society. His lyrics really made me think about all of the times people think they have found true love and are wrong. Also, it made me think of how many people are still searching for love or coping with the absence of it. With my generations culture of hookups and online relationships, real love and the intimate human connection seems so rare. I wanted to create a piece that illustrated this because of what I've seen my friends go through and just because I've realized it's a growing issue.
About the Author
Lucie Aria Green, a sophomore in high school, is a young visionary, artist, and athlete based in Los Angeles. Having received a scholarship for the Georgia O’Keeffe Arts and Leadership Program, she hopes to inspire young women, through social media, to be passionate, intelligent and curious leaders. Although she is constantly busy with track, school, friends, modeling, writing, creating art, and going on adventures, she always takes moments to enjoy the small things in life a good cup of tea or watching the stars. Lucie is an avid reader who enjoys poetry, and mystery novels. As a patron of the arts she adores fashion, photography, drawing, and playing the viola. Continuing high school in the STEM program, Lucie wants to pursue a degree in design or engineering as she hopes to one day create innovations that help our planet. Contributing to Free to Dream Magazine, Lucie believes that she can make an impact.
Follow her journey on Instagram :) @lucieariagreen
