Meaning of patterns

After reading the articles about decorative art and the related art movements like art nouveau or art deco etc., I have been thinking about my own works and the patterns I drawn, thinking about the meaning of my patterns.

These art movements, they took materials around them as inspirations and developed into patterns. Meanwhile, the lines, the forms of patterns reflects their own beliefs. They are not just as simple as patterns for decoration but also demonstrating their beliefs and messages through the patterns. For example, both Art Nouveau and Art & Craft Movement artists used a lot of nature forms, organic lines etc. to organize their creations for they despise the standard formats and stiff straight lines that made from machines. They are against the rapid rise of mechanization. Therefore, they used large amount of organic curves to remind people of the true beauty they believe in. On the other hand, Art Deco is a totally opposite idea from the two movements above. Art Deco emphasizes on the mechanical and geometric beauty, so the creations in this period normally composed by wide range amount of straight lines, symmetrical and geometric forms.

In order to push my patterns further, to make them not just delicate detail of decorations. I started to think about how can I use patterns to emphasize on things I want to talk about. I want to remind people of their childhood. I want to make my audiences recall their memories. I am thinking maybe using other childhood objects to create patterns is a way or maybe fairytales we all heard about in childhood is another way. Nature is also a material I am considering about because nowadays, due to the development of technology, children spend more time playing video games, staring at screens instead of playing outside in the nature, exploring and creating. They lost a lot of opportunities to be creative. For example, when kids play outdoor, they use their creativity and materials they found to create their own toys but now children are sitting home and holding keyboard and mouse instead. Therefore, similar like Art Nouveau or Art & Craft Movement, I think nature forms maybe can be an idea to represent that technology takes away the children’s creativity and by that to give a connection of people’s memories of playing outdoor in nature.