Tsvetelina • 16 • Dublin

16-18 Category   •  2026
This is a painting of a crow skeleton with some trees on a yellow background. I used acrylic paint to make it. My main inspirations were the later work of Jack B. Yeats and Cherry Bomb by Tyler the creator. Yeats inspired my use of lots of paint to create an interesting texture and my use of saturated, unconventional colours. Cherry bomb helped guide the feeling of the painting, especially the first few songs. I had the idea of this painting in my head for about a month before I got around to making it. I knew I wanted to do something with the theme of death, since that's one of the main things I think about when I think of nature. I had originally planned to do a more Romantic colour palette, e.g. The Swing by Jean-Honoré Fragonard, but between the time of me planning for it and actually creating the painting, I had a rough moment with one of my friends. Since, now, I needed someway to express my less admirable emotions, I took them as inspiration for the painting. The theme of death was still present but instead of being the quiet peaceful kind of death (think Terry Pratchett's Mort), it became more demanding and angry. From that point it was sort of about emotions, conflict and relationships as well, especially at their worst. I don't think we like to be angry, the same way we don't like to admit death isn't always peaceful. I was trying to accept death in my mind by sanding down it's sharper edges, the same way I was trying to console myself about this friendship by getting rid of my anger. In the end, both of these were holding me back and by letting myself and my image of death be ugly, I was finally able to paint something I was proud of. The title is meant to be sarcastic. It's the thing you yell when someone complains about the way something is, whether that's death or the trajectory of a relationship. It's something you say when you've given into futility.