Title: Memento Mori
“I wanted to explore the gradual loss of identity after death through this illustration. The skull represents how, after death, your identity is stripped from you and placed into the hands of others to shape and redefine. The post-mortem memory of a person will never fully encompass the entirety of their life, personality, and aspirations. No matter how impactful a legacy someone leaves behind, their individuality will inevitably fade away. The swirling textures in the background represent how a void is left behind after death. In the second piece, the colors are being bleached from the skull, peeling away the layers and leaving behind a blank slate. While making this piece, I tried to step out of my comfort zone and experiment with colors and stylization. A painting that inspired me was “Skull of a Skeleton with Burning Cigarette”, an early work by the impressionist painter Vincent van Gogh, which depicts a skeleton smoking a cigarette. This piece, titled “Memento Mori”, was created in Photoshop.”
