Throughout my college career I have encountered various romances that all ended in a similar fashion. After much reflection, I started to notice a pattern of emotions that I experience as my unofficial romantic relationships slowly sour over time. I define the emotional stages as love, lust, limerence, and loss. Love refers to the initial phase where I meet a new person and we slowly start to get to know each other. During this stage, I start to develop feeling for the other person as we go on dates and text each other nonstop. Soon after, our connection transcends from solely emotional and enters the realm of physical intimacy, Lust. Being able to express genuine emotion as well as physical attraction with another person through sexual intercourse is otherworldly. This stage is characterized by physical closeness and the metaphysical experience of sex. Next in the progression is limerence. Limerence is the emotional state where my romantic infatuation progresses to an obsessive degree. It is during this phase where the feelings that my partner and I once shared begin to dwindle and misalign. The more they pull back, the harder I push forward in hopes of trying to salvage the remaining spark between us. Furthermore, my own emotions cloud my judgment and blind me from the warning signs that are right in front of me. The last stage is where the romance dies. The stage of loss has presented itself to me in a few different ways before but the outcome is always the same: I am alone.

All the complex emotions discussed above are expressed in my Bachelor's of Fine Arts senior exhibition as I attempt to visualize my past heartache through self portraiture, landscapes, still life, and expressive art.