“We are never so defenseless...

....against suffering as when we love.” 

― Sigmund Freud

...and so we don't. We divorce ourselves from our emotion, our community, our family, our humanity.

We insulate ourselves with violence and cruelty. We work carefully to cover our soft spots with an impervious layer of sarcasm, bandage our wounds with too-quick laughter and  endless self-derision. We hide our pain and hoard our pleasure, panem et circenses, forever and ever, Amen. 


Let this be the awkward introduction to my Humanity series. This is, in case it is not incredibly, painfully, obvious, my interpretation of the relationship between us, the keepers (of language and art) and them, the givers ( withoutwithoutwithout). 

My guts smeared about the canvas, piece 1:

Civil War 

Inspired by a map of the boundaries of the Civil War; where the yankees began, and where they ended. This is just one wife, below the Mason-Dixon line. She has lost everything. Everything but her convictions. Present, and Free.

...I'm not interested

in the relationship of color or form or anything else. I'm interested only in expressing basic human emotions: tragedy, ecstasy, doom, and so on.

-Mark Rothko


I'm sick of doing things in order. Just the thought explaining one more damn piece no longer in my current conscious is draining enough that I want a nap. So I'm not gonna. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

This piece was, without out a doubt, the most emotionally challenging piece I have ever done. It is my boyfriend, Adam, as an infant, and his father, Ray.

http://imageshack.us/a/img502/1531/rayadam.jpg

I struggled with the lines, with the colour, with myself. I redrew, I repainted, I cried my heart out. Six attempts were made before this final version emerged.

Adam's dad passed away when he was 12. From everything I have heard, from the man that Adam is today; his goodness, grace, intelligence, creativity... Ray was an amazing man, and an even more amazing father. 

The moral, decent, solid person Ray was, contrasted so vividly with the ...lackluster version of men and fathers so prevalent today. The tragedy of it becomes so much more. 

Neither my words, nor my pencil, could ever do this relationship justice, but I will be forever grateful that it was. 

One word

“One word frees us of all the weight and pain of life:
That word is love.” 

― Sophocles

My leaving, in mind and body, hurt. It hurt me, it hurt my lover... it caused both he and I to question ...well, everything. Neither of us is particularly good at sharing our emotions, especially if they are painful ones. He was scared I wasn't coming back, and I was scared he would stop loving me, and neither of us was really talking about it.

I was working on this piece, didn't really know where I was going with it, when he texted me.

He texted me a poem, a beautiful poem... In it, he compares himself to an oak tree: solid, strong, and inherently rooted. Myself he likened to a bird: flighty and indecisive, but free. He invites me home, to him, in his tree. Together, our dichotomy creates a Symphony.