The contents of this portfolio are some of the first paintings I had ever created. Through my freshman and sophomore year of high school, I encountered a shift in my perception of beauty. High school was not a perfectly kind and easy place, and it made me disassociate from myself in a way. I wanted to understand why these are the primary years of my life, but there was something inside that told me that it wasn’t pretty. This portfolio of work, my first ever, is a general statement on a child’s relationship with beauty, and how that changes/is different throughout time. I focused on key stages on the road to full acceptance of a child growing up and understanding the shift in mentality. I purposefully didn’t compose the portraits of children because although this focuses on my relationship from a child to a teenager, it will be the same once I reach the next stages of my life, so painting adults is a universal youth in my eyes.