This appealing graffiti is on 276 Elizabeth Street in Soho, and actually, this is one of my favorite artworks in New York City. For my perspective, an unknown artist who drew this graffiti has chosen the light pink as a full-background color, for one of the meanings of pink color is “inner peace,” which a young man in the picture seriously needs now. I think he is very tired of his environment, so he needs some have a grand rest from his reality. Besides, I guess that the artist has also picked the pure white color because white represents as awakening openness and growth. Moreover, nothing can hide behind this white color because it is unmixed; it also could mean that the artist tried to give viewers to think about the meaning of this artwork and also paint some colors with our different thoughts on the pink wall in our imagination. By painting a sack which seems to be ponderous, his body, and a heart shape with all white color, we could know that both the heavy bag and the hopeful balloon are parts of him even though both objects have the utterly opposite meanings. In the graffiti, the pity boy cannot decide between his dream and reality; I think the money pocket represents as his real world, and the heart shape balloon denotes his ideal. His pathetic eyes appeal to asking anyone for help because he wants to pursue his optimistic dream, yet his reality keeps sticking to him and saying just to give it up. The reality might be an economic problem, having trouble with a national education method, or in conflict with his parents over his future. If you look carefully at his feet, you could find that he is poising himself on his toes, which means he is trying to fly for following his dream. However, unfortunately, he cannot fly at all because of the annoying massive sack, which also could depict his heavy responsibilities in real life. This art piece was fascinating to me because the young boy looks very similar to me from the past. I had serious worries of my own that are unknown to others; the sources of my trouble were also about deciding between my reality and dream. In my case, in the weighty sack, there were failing to fulfill my parents’ expectations, a fear of failure, living a different life with others, and lagging behind others in society — actually, there were some more, but these occupy most of my worries. All these my troubles have in common is that I was very conscious of the way other people are looking at me like a weird person, which I realized now that actually, it is entirely not necessary in my decision. Therefore, I think the primary purpose of painting this great art piece is to tell people that we have to make our future and dream by ourselves. As I slightly mentioned before, I want to say to individuals who have confused like me from the past that we do not need to care about how and what other people think about me and my future. No one is going to live my life instead of us, so we have to keep focusing on stepping our dream even if some disturbing things go on like incessant interruptions.
