Project Overview

The United States has waged a war on drugs, focusing on criminalizing addicts and taking down drug rings. Billions of government dollars have gone towards the criminal justice system to help them get addicts off the street and take down dealers and drug rings. All this money is spent on the drug war, yet very little funding is given to rehabilitation centers and research. 

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Art

For my art piece, I did a diptych painting showing the two personalities of a drug addict. One side shows the side of an addict off drugs and after recovery. The other side shows an addict when they are on drugs. The colors and structure of each piece have specific meaning to show this. 

This piece was inspired by the artist Gerhard Richter, who creates pieces and then uses tools to scrape some of the paint off. I created layers upon layers of paint and used different tools to scrape across my piece, leaving this as the outcome. I did this because it creates a caotic structure, representing the catoic life of a drug addict. Another reason I used this technique was to let the colors underneath show through to represent that who the person was before they turned to drugs is still there.