Inspired by the work of Aliza Razell, I wanted to explore mixed media in this project and experiment with the ways that I can specifically represent presence, emotions, and "evidence", without physically capturing these elements in an image. 

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I began by selecting one of my own photographs from this project, choosing it specifically for its repeated pattern of windows. The windows felt significant as they offered an opportunity to explore multiple narratives within a single image, allowing each space to suggest a different emotional reality.

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I printed the photograph in black and white to reflect Razell's stylistic approach and to strip the image back to a neutral base, removing emotional cues from colour alone. This allowed the added paint to become the primary emotional language. Using pink, purple, orange, and yellow posca paint pens, I applied colour selectively to the windows, guided by colour theory to represent varying emotional states from yellow signifying happiness and warmth to purple signifying power and ambition. Each window acts as a separate emotional container, suggesting that different feelings exist simultaneously behind these walls.

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Conceptually, the work explores absence and disconnection. While the colours imply emotional presence, the viewer is denied access to any concrete understanding of what is actually happening inside each room. This mirrors real life, where we regularly pass buildings and windows without ever knowing who occupies those spaces or what they are experiencing. By combining photography and paint, the piece highlights the intrinsic lack of insight we have into other people's emotional worlds, reinforcing the idea that emotional distance and unknowing are unavoidable aspects of the human experience. 

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If I were to develop this experiment further, I would push the mixed media element more deliberately rather than allowing the paint to function primarily as an emotional overlay. While the current result focuses on colour as a symbol of unseen emotion, repeating the process would allow me to experiment with restraint, scale, and placement. For example, limiting colour to fewer windows or altering the opacity of the paint to suggest emotional suppression rather than expression.

 

I would also consider varying the intensity and texture of the paint to create more contrast between emotional states, while in this piece I let the paint drip and splatter across the scene, I would like to experiment more with being more selective in which emotions I am showcasing with which intensity, strengthening the sense that each room holds a distinct and isolated experience. This would further reinforce the theme of absence by emphasising not only what is unseen, but what is deliberately hidden or withheld from view.