Marie Ward
mawzartt.comI am an artist who loves to dabble between digital designs and handmade projects, ranging in many creative outlets. From typography to meticulous illustration, a common denominator across all my work is my appreciation for detail. When working digitally, most of my process is fine-tuning pieces, which may not even be apparent in final production. I also enjoy working with alignment, layout, and playful typographic elements, getting inspiration from avant-garde styles and bold art pieces. My true passion projects come with my pen art. Specifically, when creating my drawings, I try to capture the personality behind each subject. Whether it be a person, animal, tree, or building, I enjoy finding details that our eyes don’t always catch.
Lonely Crowd
Lonely Crowd explores the question, “Are we choosing to be alone, or are we lonely?” While there is an abundance of external factors that influence generational mental health, this project specifically draws attention to the individual experience of perceiving one’s life as more lonely than it may actually be. It considers the psychological responses to social interactions that often build self-imposed barriers, pushing individuals into isolation. The underlying tone of this piece draws on the universal emotion of loneliness, embodying a sense of understanding when it comes to feeling isolated.
Presented as a two-part installation, the work features original drawings on a large canvas and an accordion book. Each drawing depicts an individual found in a park, cafe, walking on the street, sitting, or generally engaged in a mundane activity. The common factor across all the drawings is that each individual was alone at the time they were drawn. Through these pen drawings, the goal is to display the distortion of loneliness through perspective. The large canvas presents these figures as a seemingly separated crowd, symbolizing the self-imposed barriers that hinder social connection. The accordion book introduces a more literal barrier between each individual, while also allowing the viewer to engage with each drawing as a stand-alone piece.