Why I’m Drawn to Kitsch Without Irony
I’m drawn to kitsch-inspired drawings because they allow emotion to arrive without embarrassment. Kitsch has long been dismissed as tasteless, excessive, or unserious, yet those judgments often hide discomfort with visible feeling. In my work, kitsch is not a joke and not nostalgia. It is a refusal to downplay intensity. It gives emotion permission to be large, bright, sentimental, and unapologetically present.
Emotional Overstatement as Honesty
Overstatement is often framed as exaggeration for effect, but emotionally it can be a form of accuracy. Some feelings are simply too big to be rendered quietly. In my drawings, emotional overstatement appears through repetition, saturation, ornament, and excess. This is not about decoration. It is about matching the scale of the image to the scale of the internal state. Understatement would feel like distortion.
Kitsch as a Language of Vulnerability
Kitsch exposes vulnerability because it abandons restraint. It risks being misunderstood, judged, or dismissed. That risk is precisely what makes it powerful. When I use kitsch elements, bright colours, ornamental motifs, sentimental forms, I’m choosing visibility over safety. The drawing does not protect itself with cleverness. It offers emotion directly, without translation.
Ornament, Repetition, and Emotional Insistence
Ornament plays a crucial role in kitsch-inspired drawings. Repeating patterns, decorative excess, and visual density act like emotional insistence. The image keeps returning to the same feeling until it cannot be ignored. This repetition mirrors how emotion actually behaves. It doesn’t appear once and disappear. It loops, echoes, and intensifies. Ornament becomes a structural reflection of that process.
Cultural Roots of Kitsch Expression
Kitsch is deeply tied to folk traditions, devotional imagery, and popular culture, spaces where emotion was allowed to be explicit. Sacred icons, domestic decorations, handmade gifts, and ritual objects often relied on excess to communicate care, protection, and devotion. I feel connected to this lineage. In my drawings, kitsch is less about taste and more about emotional inheritance.
Colour as Emotional Volume
Colour in kitsch-inspired drawings functions like volume control. High saturation raises emotional intensity. Unexpected combinations heighten sensation. I use colour not to balance but to amplify. Pink becomes too pink. Red becomes insistently red. Gold becomes symbolic rather than elegant. This amplification is intentional. It allows emotion to be felt immediately, without subtle decoding.
Why Kitsch Refuses Distance
Many contemporary aesthetics rely on distance, irony, or minimalism to create sophistication. Kitsch refuses that distance. It moves closer instead of stepping back. In my drawings, this closeness is essential. The image does not observe emotion from afar. It inhabits it. This lack of distance can feel uncomfortable, but it is also where recognition happens.
Emotional Overload as Containment
Interestingly, emotional overstatement can feel containing rather than overwhelming. When feeling is fully expressed, it often stabilises. The drawing holds what might otherwise feel unmanageable. Excess becomes a container. By allowing everything to be present at once, the image creates a strange kind of calm. Nothing is being hidden or restrained.
Kitsch Against Emotional Minimalism
There is a cultural pressure toward emotional minimalism, to feel quietly, privately, and efficiently. Kitsch-inspired drawings resist this pressure. They argue for emotional visibility. They suggest that feeling deeply and openly is not a flaw, but a capacity. Overstatement becomes a counter-language to emotional compression.
Why These Drawings Feel Sincere
Despite their excess, kitsch-inspired drawings often feel sincere because they don’t pretend to be neutral. They declare attachment. They admit desire, tenderness, longing, and intensity. This sincerity emerges because the drawing does not try to be cool. It tries to be true to the feeling that generated it.
The Viewer’s Encounter With Overstatement
When someone encounters a kitsch-inspired drawing, the response is rarely indifferent. The image either resonates or repels. This polarity is part of its function. Emotional overstatement asks for engagement. It doesn’t fade politely into the background. It demands a response, even if that response is discomfort.
Why I Continue to Embrace Kitsch
I continue to work with kitsch-inspired drawings because they protect emotional truth from erasure. They allow intensity to exist without apology. In a visual culture that often rewards restraint and irony, kitsch offers another path, one rooted in openness, attachment, and visible feeling. For me, emotional overstatement is not too much. It is exactly enough.
