Daydreaming by Isabela Humphrey
8"x8" ($40) | 11"x11" ($85) | 16"x16" ($275) | 20"x20" (775) | 30"x30" ($2,650)
Isabela Humphrey’s work sings. Through deploying bold designs, electric planes of flat color, exaggerated perspectives and expressive gestures, Humphrey has created a visual language that is inviting, dynamic, and just plain fun. Daydreaming, the illustrator, painter and designer’s debut edition with 20x200, shows a larger-than-life figure dreaming larger-than-life dreams. Like a more demurely posed cousin of Rodin’s canonical sculpture The Thinker, Humphrey’s daydreamer rests her proportionately small head upon the top of her giant, flat hand. She’s framing her face while staring into space–but hers is a gaze full of purpose and determination instead of wistful escapism. It’s no wonder: female empowerment is a thematic thread that runs through most of Humphrey’s work.
The saying goes that if you can dream it, you can do it. The artist’s exploration of, in her words, “the quietness of introspection and the power of daydreaming” truly does depict the act as one that is generative, creative, and foundational. Surrounding the piece’s central subject are abstracted nods to the natural world, which Humphrey explains as symbolizing “growth and vitality, reminding us of the connection between our own thoughts and nature around us.” After all, as ideas birthed during daydreams take root, so too do plants of all kinds.
Humphrey, who oscillates between using physical and digital mediums in her work and has a background in fashion design, allows her different disciplines to merge and emerge in the images she creates. Daydreaming’s subject is wearing intensely bright pink and purple striped pants, and the garment is one of the first and most central elements that initially draws in the viewer. The energy behind her stripes brings to mind brainwaves, roads, or rivers, infusing motion, personality and heart into the figure’s oversized lower half. It’s almost as if ideas are radiating upwards from the ground through those pants. Of course, any designer knows that one must balance the top with the bottom, so Humphrey created her daydreamer with a broad-shouldered rectangular torso clad in a punchy marigold sweater that anchors the composition.
The woman in Daydreaming definitely has her feet on the ground while her head is in the sky, ideating forward-thinking plans for the future. If she stood up and walked off, we’d absolutely follow.
