“Common Space” / 2020 AP Drawing portfolio, abridged.

Completed using watercolor, colored pencil, oil pastel, gouache, and ink.

On New Year’s Eve of 2019, I took the Commuter Rail into Boston to visit my friend Carina. I’ve always found that public transportation provides ripe opportunities for thinking, and this ride was no different: I was on the hunt for inspiration for my AP Art concentration, and I’d found it there on that train. Seeing seats of opposing colors sharing space made me think about how physical proximity is paramount to human connection. Almost ironically, with COVID-19’s arrival months later, the intimacy of public space became something I could no longer draw from directly. The product of my transition to the small collection of images on my phone and ideas in my head mapping that spatial appreciation became “Common Space.”