As a child I was often told to see the good, be the good — very much like the muted, blinded, deafened monkeys. I worked very hard to be a good girl, an obedient girl. I studied and participated in extracurricular activities. When I was asked why I wanted to study my Master’s degree, I had no idea. And I had no idea that I had no idea. I had gotten good at making up stuff by that point. It earned marks and approval, it earned comfort and ease.
When my life exploded, I had arrived at the point where my free pass to pretence had expired. I could no longer faff my way through every day, making up meaning and reason as I went along. I was unhappy, severely unhappy, and my body refused to cooperate with the blindness. In vivid dreams and dreary waking hours she started chopping away at all the things I had made up. I had not had a happy childhood. I had pretended to be happy and take care of my adults and sister while numbing, numbing my invalidated pain. I had been abused and repressed the memory, and my body now said it was time to face the music.
I wouldn’t talk for days at a time, I could eat, sleep, recognise every third sentence. My depression protected me from waves of anger and frustration. In trying to express these waves, my painting was born. I saw an artist online who painted with her fingers and something about that resonated so deeply within me that I bought acrylics and canvas and got to work. Every painting was a homing signal, intended towards finding the real, non-pretend me. Colours bled across the spectrum and everything was allowed. There, I found home, a place to rest while I caught up with thirty years of making it all up.
As I carved away at my emotions, other parts of me showed up, those that had been strangled and mangled, disallowed in a strange world of strange rules. I had found it easy as a child to adapt as I traveled from place to place with my family. I had made friends, both boys and girls and been attracted to all sorts. When those feelings surfaced, I did what I had always done — pretended that it was something else. Pretended that I was someone else — a good girl, a normal girl.
With my paintings I found there was nothing normal about me. On the spectrum of power and normality, I found myself at the losing end in most places — gender, sexuality, race, nationality, occupation, income bracket, mental health, sociability, will to live. And yet, that tenacious will to live wouldn’t give up so very easily. Dab by dab, I painted self-love and acceptance onto the canvas. Dab by dab, guilt and shame escaped from my fingers to be replaced with a yearning to find a true home within. A home where I could simply be me and my family would be chosen to accept and honour my reality.
About three hundred paintings later, I still work on this home and this family. A family of cats helps. A loving partner helps. A therapist who stands up for me helps. A sister, no longer someone I protect, but instead, now my best friend, helps. Nature helps. Books help. Every day I realise there is so much I don’t know. I look for strength and faith to fill up the vacuum that a life without pretence can bring, sometimes so lonely and isolated. Covid does not help.
But then, every once in a while, there is a request. Someone wants a painting — to gift to someone beloved, to decorate their home, to represent who they are and protect them like a magical talisman. Someone sees that I can see them. That in my journey of looking for myself, I have been paying attention to the cues of being human. They see that when we speak, they can release what they hold, and convey in words and symbols what they seek. They see that my exhausting fight has left me with the gift of translating what I see to what I paint, and somehow, miraculously, they are able to see what they wanted enlivened and vibrant on a canvas in their homes.
This is not an easy task. The making of the paintings is a delight, connecting to someone’s soul a joy. But we live in an economy of constant visibility. Unless people see you, they forget. In this strange online world, I would be forgotten in a second if I could, so much more at home in my world of wildlife and nature, lakes and forest. But the need for sustenance is real, especially for artists hell-bent on creating original work that speaks straight to the heart and soul.
I have no formal training, no mentors or benefactors. I have a life that I have thrown myself into, even when she has fought me towards violent death. I have a scarred, scarred heart that wants for all sentient beings to find a path through their suffering towards compassion and love. I have words to speak and a life to live without fantasising my way into hippie living. Most of all, I have my paints — my eyes and my hands that work to translate the heart to art.
Take none of what I have said as a complaint. It has been joyful, it has been painful, and in this existence, I have had the opportunity to traverse the spectrum of life. How that translates into running a successful business, I have no idea. Maybe I’ll learn someday. I like learning. It keeps all the failures in perspective. Meanwhile, I laugh and I live and I love and I paint — the spectrum of life’s colours.