From the ungrounded brush

Into the rush
(Gifted; copies available)

When I showed this painting to my nutritionist, H, she was struck by the faceless body diving from the boat into the deep end of the ocean. This is very much what I have been doing lately with my symptoms, focusing on my body and forgetting who I am in favor of control of the ED. The bluebird soars over the scene, narrating the crescendos with its outsider's eye.

From the morbid brush

The banks

I sketched this painting instinctively, almost deliriously, and painted it in just as detached a state of mind, though it speaks volumes about my mental state. Soaked, the girl crawls the bank of a deadened world. The water is saturated with colors, deep without ready clarity, and the burned out land proves to be just as complex; just because it is dead does not mean that it is straightforward. The bluebird draws the girl's attention to the overwhelming reaches of the tree with its tire swing, a sullen reminder of what came before: the liveliness of childhood, the color of simplicity.

From the cacophonous brush

In the din you'll hear a bird...
(Sold! Copies available)

In the roar of the wind and sea, the girl conducts the scene, pulling and rising the waves and wind to untwist the vines. In this, the bluebird is freed, singing over the busy scene and drawing attention to his distant goal of the bramble on another cliff. What else grows on that new shore is unknown, yet the bird still heads in that direction. With blind faith I fly from one tangle of life to the next, never knowing what the new will hold.

What is Good

"Hold on to what is good even if it is a handful of earth.
Hold on to what you believe even if it is a tree which stands by itself.
Hold on to what you must do even if it is a long way from here.
Hold on to life even when it is easier letting go.
Hold on to my hand even when I have gone away from you."
























(For Sale)

From the searching brush

The Blues
(Sold! Copies available)

Gathering Spring
(Sold! Copies available)

From the tortured brush

Lifelines (pulling in the darkness)
(For Sale)

The title of this one says a lot I think, as does the painting itself. The rusted blood waves threaten to swamp her as she peels back the corner of the page to reveal the darkness behind it. Though the world holds so much promise, represented by the lively background and the tender new grass beneath her feet, she still chooses the comfort of these darknesses, though not without pain. This was done for a group about self injury, meant to represent the heavy relief it brings and portray that I was knowingly choosing darkness over life.

Update:
When my aunt, visiting from CA, saw this painting, she talked about pulling in the light, how it seemed that the colorful spaces were being gathered. Never mind that I painted it when I was deeply suicidal and saw it as pulling in the darkness and being swamped and numbed by self-injurious behavior. The open space above her makes me uncomfortable, I feel like something is missing, more darkness or something to cocoon her in. This is the painting that prompted S to ask if I was held often as a baby, if open space provokes anxiety in me and makes me search for comfort (it does). How do I feel about this? The negative voice of ED tells me that people see what they want to see, so of course my aunt sees positivity in a painting so dark. The good part of me holds onto her words and hopes that she is right; I am gathering light as much as I toy with the dark.

From the insightful chalk

My eating disorder is...

mindless and destructive, like a dragon.

"There is no space."

The irony of a tiny person in a vast, overflowing bath.

From the knowing brush

Containment Issues
(Sold! Copies available)

I did this in "Seeing Beyond Bulimia and Binge Eating." Our prompt was to depict what it felt like to be in a binge. Mine ended up being more about what it felt like to be in a purge, though. I drew a sort of Jonah and the Whale of a girl being swept out of the inside of a whale, following the putrid swirls of the contents of its stomach. She is scrambling to grab onto something and not be expelled, but it's no use because of the sheer volume in there and how it swamps her. S (the art therapist) pointed out that the girl is trapped and constricted inside the whale, but it also appears that the whale is constricted into the frame of the picture, showing that ED is restrictive, but ED itself is restricted. Also, she is calling for help, her words precious bubbles, but the bubbles pop as soon as they hit the world and are lost, unheard. I was calling and calling for help and it seemed like no one could help me, no one could grab my hand and hold onto me as that tornado inside the whale tried to suck me away.

Mercy of the Fallen
(Donated to the Renfrew Center's permanent collection; copies available)

The woman is pulling from the darkness (I didn't intend to put this in the painting originally, but it happened by accident on another piece of paper and I really liked the idea of extreme darkness and grounding) and filling up on all these secrets and shame, all of which distend her belly as they get stuck below the band/ribbon around her waist (S pointed out the emotional restriction caused by this). She is gripping her stomach and squeezing out all of these dark words she needs to speak-- her song, in the form of birds and their dotted-line trajectories and musical notes. Some of the notes have begun to fall, symbolizing my fear that no one will listen and my words will be lost if I dare to speak up. I ended up going back and adding the green glowing around those falling notes (it's difficult to see in the scan, it sort of turned gray from the light) because I've realized that your words can never truly expire, that someone can come along and scoop them up and hear them for what they're worth at any time. The focus of this work was answering the question of what do I need to do to break the cycle of self-injury, what will help me stop the process before I get to the actual act of injuring myself. When I showed L (my home therapist) this painting, she commented on the use of bluebirds, which are apparently a symbol of happiness, and suggested that maybe it has to do with my mother wanting every word that leaves my mouth to be positive and not related to any of my struggles. These happy birds then spit out the notes of what I actually mean, true emotions encapsulated within the birds, if you will.

From the discovering chalk

Swamping the song

In an individual session I did a mixed media piece with pencil, chalk, and oil pastels about the night in September when everything came crashing down and I ended up crying on the curb alone at 10 o'clock at night, pretending I was talking on the phone so that people walking by wouldn't pay too much attention. What came up was that feeling of incredible loneliness, and of being swept away by the emotions, and silently crying out for help, and feeling stripped bare. So I drew a bird crying out from the bare branches of a tree standing alone amongst a tumultuous sea. There is a wall of waves rising up from the left behind the bird. The sky is dark and chalky and dead.

A couple of days later, S and I met to process the piece. She had me put myself in the bird's place and asked me what I would say. I meant for the bird to be mournful, but he looks almost peaceful, though sad. The bird would be saying, "I'm sorry; it's not my fault," and crying out for help. He looks at peace with the fact that he is using his voice. The tree is being pulled in the direction of the branch that the bird sits on (the left, leaning toward those giant tidal waves), as if it were trained to grow slightly skewed. It is a static figure amidst a glowing, tumultuous sea. The pink in the waves represents the light and hope growing from the bottom of this sea of depression and ED and anxiety and perfectionism and self-abuse; hope, promise in the dark, goodness hidden with all these "bad" things. Maybe my troubles and weaknesses can be my strengths.

S asked if there is anything I would change about the picture. I said that maybe the bird wouldn't be alone in the tree, that there could be a flock on the other half. And maybe it could be a few hops closer to the trunk and to them, not so far out on the limb. And back in September? Back in September that bird would be on an even lower branch, one sagging under its weight, dipping perilously close to the sharp waves below. It would be hunched over and definitely not crying out for help.

The sea is not always tumultuous. It crashes down, cascades and rushes out to the right where there are calmer waters. It recedes, it doesn't always threaten to swamp my life. My parents got it wrong when they pushed me so hard, but they did the best they knew, and they didn't know much because I wouldn't speak up for myself. But if I keep doing so, the sea might just calm down a bit.

self love

Wild Geese by Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting--
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.