Sara B. – Hand on Heart

For this “Hand on Heart” project I knew I wanted to take a more experimental approach. I had loose, evolving ideas and wanted my piece to be immersive in some way. I enjoyed playing with acrylic and watercolour paints, paper, varied fabrics, pen, card and more and explored how they all interacted with each other. Even though the overall design of the piece was ever-changing my desire to use a range of mediums stayed consistent.

I feel now that my piece talks about how throughout your life, different things will try to grab a piece of your heart like hobbies, nature, people and much more. Some of those things will be selfish and want to snatch your heart for themselves at your detriment, while others might be beneficial to you and only wish to support your heart. They might try to even help or sabotage each other, losing sight of your heart but still linger close. Regardless of this chaos, your heart will still stand strong, be vibrant and be prominent.

I wanted the viewer to be able to feel the heart along with the hands, but also to honour the complexity and fluidity of humans. We all have aspects of ourselves (our quirks or traits) that stand out and originate from our love, from our heart. I had to scrap some ideas as there wasn’t enough time like having the hands depict various things in life rather than being plain white, adding flowers and using an even more varied range of mediums such as markers and pencils. It will be a project for another time.

Unfortunately, the artwork’s texture, 3D presence and depth can only be felt in person. I wanted the viewer to be lured to touch the heart and hold it, for their hands to become part of the artwork, and interact with the other hands in the collage. I wanted them to experience that they too have the human to desire to be special to someone, and to experience, not just see, their heart.