My name is Misha Mazzitelli. I have been an artist for 9 years. In this piece, I wanted to capture emotion in a symbolic painting about passing time, and missed opportunities, reflective on my history of giving up. This painting is loosely based on in Flander’s Field, poppies symbolizing the poppies growing on soldier’s graves, post war, with a glimmer of hope for recovery, being the innocence of animals. The light of the fireflies to guide you, overall, to symbolize hope after something seems irreversible. Growing up I’ve been discouraged from trying to do big things, being told ‘it’s too hard, it’s impossible” and many times I had missed my opportunity to learn and create the things I knew I could have created, participate in events, and make friends because I was too afraid of failure. I didn’t realize that without trial and failure, I would never succeed. Eventually I began to try new things, talk to more people, and learn failure was ok as long as I continue trying.

In my process of creating this painting, to create a strong composition, I included light sources to lighten the dark spaces and to draw the eye to the lightened space. The red poppies add a bright pop of color in contrast with the cool snow and dark sky, and the shapes of the animals in this piece draw the eye due to their unique shape in contrast to the rest of the painting. I typically mix my paint with water to smooth it out, to do a wash in the color the canvas will become in order to understand what colors I want to place, and to create depth like many colors have in real life, like the burn of the flame, moon, or fireflies. Creating the effect of light was the most difficult part of this piece because of the amount of layering, drying time, and focus it needed. To make the light have a ‘burn’ effect, I thinned a yellow color with some water and applied it with a short stiff brush, then applied red in the center, let it dry, then replaced it with red. In the sky, I used values of black and white, then applied a blue wash on top, before using pure white for the moon. I layered red, yellow, and black to create the depth in the poppies, and I layered colors from the environment to make the snow reflect like it does in reality. I hope whoever else comes across this going through a hard time can relate and help themselves grow from whatever difficulties they face, and realize it’s never the end.