Donating A Special Piece of Art

May 28, 2021

Academics

GNS

Two Class of 2021 grads have used their artistic talents to donate a very special piece of art to the school. Giulia Giommi and Katrina Wei have been active members in the Senior School Art Club for four years and wanted a way to give something back to their community.

“We had been working towards making a piece for the school for a while,” they explained. “In Grade 11 our main project was to teach the Middle School Art Club students to make hair clips, and that was also a pretty fun experience for us. Grade 12 is busier, so we decided to go for something fun and relaxing, so we decided to try painting birds.”

Giulia and Katrina knew they wanted to paint an animal from the beginning, but their idea evolved over time. Originally they aimed to paint a deer, and create a more textured background using thick paint strokes. However, once they changed their focus they painted the entire canvas white again, but the texture of the paint strokes remained.

“Our art styles are quite different,” said Giulia. “Since the two of us were working on a painting together, and we had never done anything similar before, we decided to go for a simpler subject to better convey our message to our audience.”

The bluebird on the left of the painting was drawn by Katrina, while the green-grey one on the right was Giulia. By painting the same subject—birds—their different styles were able to unify and harmonize. The background was coloured green and using circular motions. To create depth, the background colour transitions from dark green to a lighter green near the edge. To complete the painting, Giulia and Katrina added white flowers on vines. The white colour was used to highlight the main subject of the painting so the birds are the first thing people notice.

Katrina and Giulia worked on their piece every Monday throughout the school year, which they estimated took nearly 20 hours. They wanted to come up with a unique and fun name for their piece to represent it so they choose to use the emoticon (◉Θ◉), which they felt spoke more than words.Their art piece is currently hanging in the hallway of Upper Simpson.

“We hope people feel happy and at peace, the same way we did while painting it,” they said.