This painting, titled "Jessica: A Self-Portrait of Childhood" was created by Jessica O’Brien, who won the Visual Art category of the “Tell Your Story” student contest conducted by UC Santa Barbara’s Division of Humanities and Fine Arts for Give Day 2018.
Life in Humanities and Fine Arts is a compelling story of Creativity, Imagination and Empathy and O’Brien’s minimalistic painting, with its strokes of watercolor umber and delicately rendered eye, helps to illustrate that story.
O’Brien is a UCSB Sophomore from Redondo Beach, California, who is majoring in the Humanities.
“This small painting is a tribute to myself as a child, a girl who struggled deeply and internally.
I hope to convey my personal experience of the discordant selves which may be dissociated within one person, and to invite conversation about memory, integration of the self, and our human potential for flourishing in the face and the shadow of tragedy.”
— JESSICA O’BRIEN
Jessica O'Brien holds her winning piece for a photo. (Photo by Sasha Nasir)