Kerrigan's Journal

I started out on this painting having no idea of what I wanted to paint, which tends to be a problem when it comes to starting my work in general so this was nothing new. Then something happened to me over one weekend and it made such an impact on me. I realized I wanted to somehow portray the feeling of disappointment and regret. I struggled to what images came to mind when I thought of the emotion. So in order to just get at least something on the canvas, I just painted whatever I felt. The first version, with the drips of thick blue paint and light blue/green paint in between, I liked a lot. I didn't think the blue really went with the feeling I was going for so I painted over the whole thing with a darker, grayer blue. 

When I thought about this feeling, I kept thinking about the sense of having everything fall down around me. And that there would somehow be a sense of loneliness in the fact of being such a disappointment and having such regret. So I kept painting over what I would have previously done about an hour before, disliking everything that was coming out. Then I tried to use a different technique, the spray painting. I painted what I felt in my head. I guess it came out looking a bit like a space ship beaming down but it was more supposed to look like the effect of a whirlwind. Having those feelings of regret and disappointment came to make me feel like I wasn't really sure how to act anymore and left me feeling confused. It was centered because I felt like, after this event, that every time someone looked at me, they knew exactly what had happened and were judging me for it, which of course now, looking back on it, I know is not the case. The strokes on the outside are supposed to have the effect of everything falling down. Although it doesn't come off like that, I like the looking they give to the painting.