Curatorial Rationale The theme that joins all of my chosen works throughout the past few years has been a statement of my personal expression. Each artwork, whether three-dimensional or wearable art pieces or flat paintings and digital prints, were all created in reference to my identity. Throughout my years of personal artistic progression, I have always used it to express, in some form or another, myself or emotions. Prior to this IB art experience, I primarily used two-dimensional art styles, as I felt most familiar and enjoyed painting and paper drawings the most. However, with the opportunities that Ronald Reagan High School and IB presented to me, I was able to expand my knowledge and practice in both broadly different forms of artwork and my enjoyment for them. I hope to continue to broaden my techniques and materials as I continue to express myself through my artworks, specifically in my abilities towards the art forms I was able to experiment with during these past two years. All chosen art pieces circle around self-expression and discoveries within the past few years. Some pieces, like the digital piece Jörmungandr and Thor's Battle of Ragnarök, were created on Procreate and edited on Windowsphotoshop and a wood carving of Jörmungandr, are both based around my religious beliefs as a Norse Pagan and ancestral history primarily in Scandinavian regions. Other works, like Four Years a photography piece edited in photoshop or Koi created digitally and similarly edited in photoshop, are of or in reference to some of the closest people to me and how they and the places around us have deeply shaped who I am as a person and who I will become. Three artworks, Overrated, Plants, and Progression; the Inability to Look Back, are each digitally created on Procreate and edited on photoshop, are reflected in my own mental health and emotional progression throughout the years. Throughout all these works, I took inspiration from a variety of sources and artists, some artist inspiration is one of the most influential and widely known painters, while another is a lesser-known internet photographer, with other inspiration being artifacts connecting to my culture. In the past, I had commonly drawn inspiration from the media I viewed like television and social media, with this art course I was able to expand that inspiration into a bigger variety. I chose to take this wide assortment of sources to better expand my artistic ability and inspiration without focussing on a single genre or theme. Growing up, I had only experimented with two-dimensional art forms like painting on a canvas or drawing onto paper with mediums like pencils or markers, it was not until high school that I was truly able to experiment with sculpture, digital art, and other three-dimensional creations which is why I specifically chose artworks out of my normal comfort zone. Although I wanted to include a variety, I most commonly created digital drawing pieces. I felt most comfortable with the digital artworks I created as I have had a lot of practice with them as it was similar to pencil to paper drawings. With the familiarity, I found that they were more favorable to ones I was not as comfortable with and had less practice to, like three-dimensional works. When a viewer sees my creations, I would want them to see a wide assortment of different kinds of artwork. I would hope my audience would understand how each artwork was created in a varied form of personal meaning, with all tying in with the underlying idea of self-expression.