Above is one of McNamara’s works of art. (Serena Arora/Connector)
Serena Arora
Connector Contributor
The angst of living as a creative person can be self-crippling.
The life of always overthinking, overanalyzing, feeling different from those around them.
However, Talia McNamara has a gift that comes with being an ingenious being. She has the DaVinci code for releasing pain. Anytime, anyplace, she is feeling down she can create a grotesque masterpiece out of her two hands.
McNamara loves explicitly drawing ugly and creepy things because there is always a story behind the monster. She feels that a gnarly misunderstood vampire can tell the story of a thousand souls. She loves to draw those souls in the drawing’s eyes.
McNamara also feels that her art helps her to “create stories or a visual narrative which is what” helps her “focus or want to start a project.” She has stampeding thoughts racing through her mind throughout the day. So when McNamara finally sits down to rest and begins, “her head begins to clear, and the art simultaneously relaxes while also focusing her.” Her art is her self-care.
McNamara’s art process consists of her doodling until she comes up with something she likes, and if there is a mess up then McNamara has to cover it again and it usually just becomes something other than what she intended but ends up working in the end.
McNamara also took the answer a step further and elaborated how, “for an actual painting” she takes her “own reference picture, sets up a photo shoot with the lighting, and the makeup, and everything.” She then takes “the picture, prints it, and sketches it and paints it.”
For the days McNamara is not feeling artistic but is craving inspiration, she looks at other art that makes her “inspired to do art.” She utilizes outlets such as Pinterest, or watches The Office until she gets bored and says “I should do something!”
When asked specifically what inspires her, she described how she finds quotes, pictures, words, anything that speaks to her inner artist. She also said that she “can’t help but be drawn to the darkness.”
The menacing part of life inspires McNamara, what inspires you?
