Personal Project - "Crying Babies"

The theme of this series began in the quiet unraveling of a life that no longer felt like mine. While pursuing a degree in biochemistry, I became increasingly detached from my emotions, from others, and from any real sense of belonging. Each time I felt overwhelmed, convinced that showing sadness or vulnerability made me weak, like a “big baby.” That common phrase often used to dismiss someone’s feelings lingered in my mind, eventually becoming the seed of the work itself. During periods of academic strain and long hours at my internships at CRB Innovations with my grandfather, this detachment grew heavier. Whenever I felt consumed by stress, I began drawing grotesque, distorted crying babies as a way of externalizing emotions I could not otherwise express.

These paintings, unsettling yet strangely humorous, became a private outlet for release. Over time, they evolved into paintings, where I would sketch directly onto canvases. What started as scattered sketches slowly grew into a theme, and eventually a body of work that felt authentically mine. What emerged was a series of portraits of adults with oversized infant heads figures caught between the composure demanded by maturity and the raw intensity of hidden emotion. The phrase “big crying baby,” once a source of shame, transformed into the central metaphor of my work.

In developing them, I not only confronted personal themes of exhaustion, anxiety, and fear of failure, but also began building the practical skills of observation, composition, color, and visual storytelling. Just as importantly, I learned how to shape a concept into a sustained body of work, moving from private sketches to finished paintings, and finally to an exhibition.