An artist's Brief But Spectacular take on letting the colors speak for you

Transcript

Notice: Transcripts are machine and human generated and lightly edited for accuracy. They may contain errors.

John Yang: Kennady Bob is a Los Angeles based artist who expresses herself through both large scale paintings and small sketches. After experiencing great loss early in her life, Kennady found that through art, she could process the feelings she struggled to put into words. Tonight, she shares her Brief But Spectacular take on letting the colors say it for you.

Kennady Bob, Los Angeles Based Artist: I, early on in my artistic process, realize that artists healing, its therapeutic. Some experiences on my head have been too much for my heart to bear. And the ways that I’m able to clear myself of that is through allowing the colors to express it for me.

Me and my twin sister, Kendall, our mother passed away when we were six years old. She had us when she was 37, she passed away six years after that. So there were a lot of things that she looked forward to experiencing in her life that she just wasn’t able to accomplish.

Me and my sister gets to live through the things that she dreamed of doing. My mother is present me, every day that I walk throughout the streets of LA. I’m really grateful to carry her with me and to share this city with her.

The summer 2016, that was my first experience sharing my artwork in LA. I was writing a high from the art show. I was sobered up really quick when I couldn’t make the rent, and I started working full time. I started carrying around a little pocket sketchbook because up until then I had been making larger paintings. And it takes time and energy to be able to sit with a painting of that size. but I just didn’t have that time to myself anymore.

The time that I was working in that little sketchbook really gave me the basis for my style and for a lot of the themes and motifs that are present in my work to this day because they really helped me to process and to understand everything that was going on under the surface.

The ways that my emotions come through my artwork is primarily through the use of color. I’ve always drawn a connection between the spectrums of the rainbow, to the literal, you know, spectrum of emotion that goes on within my body, everything that’s expressed through color, and through line and shade. All of those things are expressions of the parts of my mind and the parts of my heart that I don’t feel I will ever be able to put into words. So that’s why it’s so hard for me to put it into words right now.

It allows me to clear my body to clear my mind of anything that’s lingering under the surface that needs to come out. If I could say one thing to my mother, I would just tell her that I love her. And that I hope that I’m making her proud. My name is Kennady Bob and this is my Brief But Spectacular take on letting the color say it for you.

John Yang: You can watch more Brief But Spectacular videos online at pbs.org/newshour/brief.