Emily Wu YOU CAN DO IT (Vic)
Tell us how your artwork addresses this year’s theme ‘I Can’:
“You can do it!” says one girl to another – but who is addressing who? The girl drawing on the floor represents my childhood self, while the one who’s watching on is me in the present day. “You can do it,” the younger version tells the older version, an encouragement to keep on going. “You can do it,” I tell my younger self, a reassurance that the things she dreams for will come in time. She wished to be able to do many things: be confident, be a good artist – things that she couldn’t quite do yet. But, I can do those things. There is so much more that I can do now that I am older and have more experience. This piece is for my younger self – to tell her that with hard work and patience, she will be able to do all the things she wants to be able to do. She couldn’t draw people very well, or cook her favourite meals, or run for ten minutes at a time. But I can!
Tell us about the ideas or themes your artwork explores with the theme ‘I Can’:
If you could tell your five year old self one thing, what would it be? I’d tell her, “I can do it now.” ‘It’ being one of the many things that I wanted to be able to do and couldn’t at the time – things I couldn’t wait to do once I was older. Sometimes, when you’re always looking forwards, with
your eyes always set on a bigger, bolder, more ambitious goal, you forget what you came from. Sometimes, we need to look behind us, to the kids we were, to the inner child inside all of us. Even when we feel like we have a long way to go, we have actually come so far from where we started. The world today is so quick and full of bright minds and talented people that we sometimes feel like impostors when we do the things we’re good at. Whenever I feel like I’m not good enough, I think of my five year old self: she would be proud of how far I’ve come. We should all strive to be the best versions of ourselves that we can be – people whom our past selves would look up to.
What type of art have you submitted and why?
I have used oil pastels and collage materials to create this artwork. I felt like the oil pastels, with their vibrancy, reflected the childish and innocent feeling that I wanted to capture. The room is sparse but covered in the evidence of creativity, evoking a sense of nostalgia for simpler times.
While the younger girl on the floor is hastily rendered in scribbles, much like how I used to draw as a child, the older girl crouching down is in higher detail with more layering and shadows, reflecting how people gain depth as we age.
