The figure in the piece is repressed, and perhaps the lavender she is holding was a gift from a secret lover. The stained glass and the light shining through it, affecting the rest of the colors, represent the beautiful feelings leaving a "stain" on her heart and life.
4/4

They were dubbed the “Lavender Menace” - lavender being taken allegedly because purple had been seen as a “gay color." The term “Lavender Menace” was reclaimed at the time though and while it is not popular today, it is still sometimes used (in a positive light)!

3/

2/

Back in the 1970s, lesbians were excluded from the second wave feminist movement and various events and spaces, believing that they would somehow “taint” the movement.

You should read the story if you haven't, but the skull in the piece is representative of a really cool skull lantern in the story, and the folk patterns in the smoke/light are representative of this connection I found to my cultures through traditional folk stories and art! ✨

it really resonated with me as somebody who struggles with some severe mental health issues (OCD and anxiety are very interesting to live with...). I also just really love stories about witches who live in the woods!

It's kind of like Cinderella with Slavic flair and this rich, realistic gloominess that makes it more satisfying. This story about a girl lost in the darkness and falling upon kindness, comfort, and safety within that darkness, leading her back home...

I love literature (also food, but that's another story 🏃‍♀️) so that was what I focused my attention on!

Vasilisa the Fair is one of the Polish folktales (fairy tales? people fight over the classifications lol) I came to love.

were discriminated against (they were Polish and Irish immigrants in the U.S. during the early to mid 1900s), and people I am no-contact with. When I was a teenager, I experienced this moment of... what I can almost describe as mourning for this loss of culture.

I was (and still am honestly) really disconnected with my family's cultures due to elders being extremely old and passing before I was old enough to remember them, family members attempting to assimilate the best they could because their ethnicities
3/

I decided to make an illustration about my love of literature and how it connects to both my mental illness and the loss of and reconciliation with culture!
2/

Maybe everyone's experience truly is unique to some degree in connecting with a work. Taking the more analytical view, maybe what we take away from it is what really matters, even moreso than the artist's original intent (as horrible as that feels sometimes as an artist).

The separation of the art from the artist is SUCH an interesting concept to me, and I still don't entirely know how to feel about it.

I don't have some kind of answer at the end of this thread, or a stark opinion to share.

This is just really interesting.

A lot of my favorite classical painters were surely bigoted towards people like me specifically, sexists and/or homophobes...
Does liking an artwork automatically mean an endorsement of all of the artist's beliefs?

No, obviously. But if the work has overtly bigoted ideals, I will think you a bigot.

That said, some artist's bigotry and bullshittery inherently taints the art.

I think, using these arguments, you could even say that liking arts made by horrible people IS still a reflection of you, potentially you being horrible too... but that doesn't feel entirely right either.

I want to be known, I want my works to be known as mine, but my art is for others! I don't think one's irredeemable actions should be left behind, but I don't think those beautiful shards of humanity within a piece should be corrupted when they can bring so much comfort still.