This piece placed third (tie) for Art submissions in the 2024 Ánimo Voices WRITING, ART, & SPOKEN WORD COMPETITION 2024, which invited students to respond to an open prompt. The competition is an opportunity to motivate, recognize, and celebrate our strong student voices through writing, spoken word, and art.

Our Shared Horizon

Karol and Koral Macias: Artist Statement

Materials that we used to create our painting are layers of oil paints, acrylics,
gouache, ink wash, pastel, and makeup. We planned our piece with a collection of reference
photos and our iPads. The painting rests on two connected 40 X 30 canvases, resulting in an
80 X 30 painting. The main subject of our piece is the landscape of our identity as twins. The baby
twins are oil painted inside a placenta in intense red oil paint in order to show that even now
we are always together. We purposely painted our brains connected because we
simultaneously have the same ideas. We really feel like clones – two people in one. One is
never alone; There is always someone by our side. We want the viewer to understand how
profoundly beautiful it is to have a twin, a team mate for life. This is represented by the
panoramic fun landscape containing musical notes, bright colors, and the fun paintings we
create together. This beautiful horizon represents the identity we share. The woven complimentary
colors yellows and purples shows how we are interconnected. We included a sun and a moon
in order to show that, like twins, we are yin and yang. The portraits of our parents,
responsible for our identical genes, creates equal visual weight and asymmetrical balance on
the left & right. The clouds, umbilical cord from our mama, and music notes, all create
convergence towards the focal point: the baby twins in the single uterus. The uterus is placed
in a natural environment of trees in order to show that even now, we are still growing
together. We unify the painting by repeating clusters of musical notes, banderas, paintings,
trees, and flowing lines. Our limited color palette to contrasting blue purples, yellow oranges,
pinks, and greens also supports unity. Our dominant principle of design is the flowing rhythm of musical notes in the sky
and repetition of motifs such as banderas and paintings within the landscape. This rhythm
connects the canvases in order to represent how our father’s passion for music inspired our
identical passion for visual art. Just like our mother gives us nourishment with her umbilical
cord, our father’s passion nourished us to become creative. The house at the left conveys that
as twins, we desire to live together in this landscape and our commitment to each other in
the future. The trees are wrapped in flowing banderas, matching the house’s color palette,
representing our Mexican Culture, and giving our work a strong sense of home. An umbilical
cord also, at last, pulls the viewer’s eye to the right: our mama. We are so grateful that she
nourished both of us and gave us life. Our mother is surrounded by canvases that multiply
representing our identical desire to pursue a career in art. Just recently, our mother told us
she would support our dream to become “visual artists.” We are so grateful for this beautiful horizon and identity we share and hope our
viewer is inspired to create an equally beautiful joint horizon with a partner. Our need to
separate from each other is also a huge part of our identity which is why our dual connected
paintings can separate and connect.

 

 

Karol and Koral Macias

11th Grade, Ánimo Jackie Robinson

Guiding Teacher: Rachel Kopera