My most personal work yet
This is the first time that I will be showing this piece titled 'Endosymbiont". It is my most personal piece to date. As you might know, I don't usually create figurative work but this was different.
This winter, while going through surgery and radiation treatment for breast cancer, I started an abstract piece of artwork using the kelp that is in the foreground of this work. The next morning I woke up with an image of a figure (myself) entwined in the kelp, almost as if it was a spinal cord. My first reaction was "There's no way that I want to draw a figure!". Having been an illustrator for so long and also spending hours and hours in figure-drawing sessions, I thought that was all behind me.
But deep in my soul, I knew this was the work that wanted to come out of me at that moment. I went to the studio and obsessively spent all day drawing the outline of the figure that I had seen in my dream. When I was finished I stood back and looked at it. I cried. It so dramatically put into a visual everything that I had been feeling.
Over the past few years, I've realized that my work is about the relationship and connection that I have with my body more than anything. If you have been following my blog, you know that this year dealing with breast cancer was just an extension of a long and complicated relationship with my body, nervous system, trauma, and chronic illness. And also, how connecting and co-regulating with the water and its inhabitants has become not only the inspiration for all the work I've done over the past year but has been a part of my healing.
An endosymbiont is any organism that lives within the body or cells of another organism. Seaweed and kelp are some of our earliest ancestors in our evolution. As they were developing from simple algae, two unique organisms merged and learned how to breathe in the depths of the darkness and eventually on land. My first inspiration from these beings was looking at them on land, at the beach, seemingly breathing in the wind. At that time, in the midst of a very deep depression, I knew that they had something to teach me. They were teaching me how to regulate my body, how to breathe again, and how to live in flow. This image, I feel, depicts that relationship well.
Each step of the process in creating this has been intuitive. Meaning, I didn't plan any of it. I didn't know how the final outcome would look, but I followed my guidance and body knowing each step of the way.
This work consists of two pieces hanging from a wooden support.
The front piece is charcoal, graphite, and ink on watercolor paper, mounted on an archival board. The back piece is mixed media; fluid acrylic paint, acrylic ink, graphite on watercolor paper, mounted on archival board. I have written into the pack piece part of the first poem that I wrote during that difficult time in my life, as I was lying on the rocky shore:
i want to merge with the
sand and sea
descend into the depths and
start a new life
surrounded by the womb-like pulse
of the waves
maybe the sea people and the starfish
will understand me
This work is available for purchase and will be up all month at Slide Gallery.
Thanks to Paul Bond for his collaboration on the wooden hanging support.