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Exploring art

Explore the following artwork.

My Heart (Is Beautiful) by Christi Belcourt, 2009

A nine-foot-by-twelve-foot painting of about fifty diverse plants and animals represented in bright hues on a dark background. There are very small white dots, cool-hued dots, and larger neutral-hued circles spread throughout the dark background. The left side and right side of the image have a symmetrical arrangement of plants and animals. All of these shapes are created with many tiny dots of paint that look like beads. In the lower corners of the image are the roots of plants whose stems curve and branch out across the entire painting. Many diverse plants grow out of these stems and fill most of the space in the image. These plants include arrowhead, bear berry, birch, blanket flower, blueberry, blue flag, cedar, chokeberry, daisy, dandelion, dogbane, juniper, leather leaf, maple, oak, old man whiskers, pine, pink lady's slipper, purple prairie cone flower, rabbit tobacco, raspberry, rose, sarsaparilla, spruce, strawberry, sumac, tamarack, tiger lily, wild rice, and yarrow. Spread out among the plants are a couple of chickadees, hummingbirds, sparrows, spider webs, robins, ticks, and woodpeckers. In the lower central part of the image is a small body of water with a turtle and snake in it. Cattails, pitcher plants, pond lilies, and sundews are growing in and around the water with their roots visible below the surface. In the upper corners of the image there are ribbons of diverse hues hanging near the top of a stem.

  1. How does this artwork make you feel?
  2. What do you notice about the style of this artwork?
  3. Do you notice any symbols represented in this artwork? What do you think they might mean?

Record your responses using a method of your choice. If possible, share your thoughts with a partner.

Symbol

A symbol is any thing that is used to represent something else.