The purpose of my paper is to explore the relationship between the tradition of storytelling and the artist’s method of developing a personal mythology. A personal mythology is a collection of myths in the form of characters, stories, events, or symbols, which can become a tradition and a vocabulary for the person who creates them. In this paper I examine the personal mythologies of the poet Diane Wakoski, the artists Kiki Smith, Frida Kahlo, to develop a language around my own personal mythology.

My thesis artwork is a sequence of paintings that depict my personal mythology. In my work I have distilled a narrative by exploring the relationships between symbolic characters, such as a lion and sheep. My personal mythology represents my process of internalizing and digesting life. My process of creating mythology is informed by researching other artist’s methods and work.