i Am, i Am, i Am
Where do I begin with this piece, we'll just start from the beginning: the big pink face. There's another article on how pink became my color but yea, pink is my color, my soul's color. So that's why it's pink, but the face itself came from me having the idea to create a painting with a person's mouth agape and the universe pouring out of them. I took a photo of myself for reference and got to work on drawing that.
After taking the photo, somewhere along the way, I had the vision of the brain being a garden and those strands of hair dangling worked perfectly as leaves. I wanted to put a garden in the brain to convey that the brain is growing and learning, changing. As I kept going, I decided to put butterflies all around it, because I absolutely love butterflies and what they signify: growth and change; going within to grow and come out the same but completely different. I feel that way, I'm still that Karma from young, but completely different; still changing.
As I kept going, I decided to add clouds around it too, because that's how I feel: up in the clouds, head in the clouds. This painting truly became as I went, it started with a big face and the universe then became so much more. I wanted the universe to be coming out of them to symbolize that the universe is within them, always.
After I was done, I looked at my creation. I already knew what it was called, i Am. The 'i' and 'A' are purposely lowercased and capitalized. It's meant to symbolize how the power isn't in the 'i,' the 'me' but rather the 'Am,' the being, the action, the doing, the verb. The power is in the action: i Am, she Is, they Are. i Am conveys all the am's that I see in the piece: i Am love, i Am pure, i Am growing, i Am changing, i Am learning, i Am bold, i Am loud, i Am free, i Am well, i Am the universe, to name a few.