Gaby Pinewood

Most of my artwork is not the most happy thing in the world. I have yet to make something that doesn’t inherently have anything dark or sad in it (ok maybe that’s not entirely true but still). However, I know that my life experience is mostly the reason why my content is the way that it is.

People have told me that I’m nice and wholesome and that notion of me completely conflicts with my content. So why do I still gravitate towards making content like such when for me at the moment life is pretty ok? Well no matter how much life gets better there’s still a cruel world to brave. Being shy and unassuming growing up, I’ve done my fair share of people watching and seeing how those around me react.

To me making that sort of content feels like that only thing I can do well. When it’s time for an assignment, I feel like I have to do something dark and sorrowful. I can’t stop till I create that story in my mind.

There was one short film I made last semester as well as a sequel to that today. It had a character distressingly painting some sort of mess of a work. When I presented that work in class for my final, my professor played it 3 times in front of the class. I was extremely uncomfortable because A. I’m shy and B. that was a creepy and weird piece.

I try to make myself uncomfortable developing the story. Working on my semester long project now, I have added elements to try and make the story more unnerving as it is about one of my fears. With one of the outfits that I wore during the shoot, I felt so miserable and despondent. However, I knew that this outfit was needed for the story to come through.

Speaking of fears- that has been such an inspiration. It is the one thing I can say that helps with creating content. One thing that I do is intentionally scare myself with stories, movies and YouTube videos. I myself have a lot of fears so that is not too hard to do. For me I always feel like I can be one step to losing myself and that is a great fear of mine reflected in my work. When you know something well like fear it’s easy.

So the next step for me is then is how will I convey that message to others. Many things are collectively strange to all of us. However, clashing a creepy story with something positive like bright colors or something common and changing it up a little makes the viewer confused on what they’re watching.

I wish I could say more on how I come up with this weird way of storytelling but unless you’ve encountered some cultish environment and been in constant psychological and emotional distress growing up, I don’t really know what to say. I’ve seen a thing or two and I know many other people have as well.

The greatest piece of advice I can give is create something good out of a bad situation. Some great piece of artwork can come out of it. I guess you could say that the way I craft my artwork is just me purging my demons. I do hope that because of it I will become a better storyteller. That is what my end goal is regardless of anything else.