Reclamation
In 2018, I was forced to leave my home because it was poisoning me, and had been for fourteen years, very slowly.
I lost basically everything, my furniture, clothes, irreplaceable possessions, photo albums, costumes, and pretty much all of my art. We couldn't really afford to leave, but things were dire concerning my health and we figured out the house was playing a major role. Friends were kind enough to set up a go-fund-me so we could get out. I was able to find a new, safe apartment in about two weeks after, but that was just the beginning of a long and terrifying road towards healing.
We could not afford to clean much of anything, save a few clothing and costume items, one of my art pieces, and all my journals. However, I found that even after my journals had been professionally cleaned, I was still having reactions to them by coming in direct contact.
For someone who was on the verge of hysteria and plagued with a lot of physical pain, anxiety and depression due to mold exposure, this was an enormous emotional and mental blow. So much loss all at once was soul crushing, and I spent the next few years wondering how I was going to survive any of it.
Fast forward to 2022, where after having to take it upon myself to direct my healing as most medical professionals didn't know what to do with me, I have improved. It's been hard to even discuss my condition, because its a trigger, and completely exhausting to deal with. I'm lucky to be here, this whole ordeal could have killed me, but I persevered even despite how I was being forced to feel.
I am now well enough to write and create again on a semi regular basis. I'm also at a point where I feel
the tide might be starting to turn for me, even while I'm still having to fight for myself.
As emotional and mental capacities that I had been stripped of are returning, I've felt the growing
need to reclaim *me* again, and have recently gone back to all those journals that I saved.
I still can't physically come into contact with them, so I've had to handle them through plastic, but I'm collecting images and writings that were left behind or left unfinished to post here.
I hope to also be able to get pictures of my art now languishing in a storage unit, especially some of the items that were in progress if they still exist. I will be posting those in a gallery here, or as they relate to other art pieces on this site.
So, this is a time of personal archaeology, of reaching back to move forward.
Reclaimed Art
Lost Paintings
I can't for sure say when this group was made, but during a short span of time in the early oughts and probably no later than 2009. All these pieces were done on gessoed masonite boards in acrylic.
I had done these just for myself, as an outlet to express some emotions that weren't able to be put in words or more defined shapes. I once had this tiny spiral bound sketchbook that contained numerous doodles, sometimes with words, akin to this style of painting, but all done in ink pen. I suppose this is what you could term automatic drawing/writing as they were purely surreal and uncensored stream of consciousness. Many came out as weirdly and even terrifyingly visceral, some rather funny, and often some drawings encompassed both. I would draw in that tiny book when I felt blocked or just couldn't do anything else. It seemed to work some things out.
These paintings were a more colorful extension of those bizarre little sketches. Back when I did them, I wasn't terribly proud of them or even liked them all that much. I felt like....they weren't as refined, or I guess skilled as I wanted to be. A friend of mine wanted to buy all of the paintings and I barely wanted to even charge her for them. She never got the chance to, as they had to be left behind in the rest of the things from the old house, and they doubtless wound up in the bin in the alley.
My feelings on these paintings now are vastly different now, having some perspective, and I'm glad I had the sense to photograph them. I was expressing valid states of being and emotions in a raw way that I simply wasn't comfortable with. I had done two larger, very cathartic but disturbing (to me) paintings to try and deal with some feelings that had a strangle hold on me. One turned out tremendously sexual on top of visceral; the other was all out rage at my parents for past events. Both were very dark, and basically the product of emotions that were extremely repressed. These two were also lost, and I have no copies of them.
I have a new found respect for these paintings, and I am sad that they no longer exist. In fact I found within them one of my repeating themes: the flaming heart. I know this one was the last of the group, and how telling that this symbol worked its way into so many other pieces of mine.
These have inspired and informed me, at this delicate time in my life, that I still have unspoken forces within which require expression, and I must respect that. Because of what happened to me mentally and emotionally concerning my health, much of what I am (still) dealing with is very outsized and not proportional to situations. Often times I don't want to give the emotions leave because they will drag me to places that are hard to extricate myself from. But, if these lost paintings have taught me anything, it is that I can give myself a safe space to try and cope with what's eating at me. So I may make a careful return to this style, for therapeutic reasons, and see where it goes.
