How it began
First Painting - Tuesday, September 20, 2022
It has been suggested to me, several times, by various people, that I should start a journal. The problem is, I’m absolutely terrible at journaling. Terrible! I will do one, maybe two pages, put the journal on my nightstand and never open it again. Then I go to Barnes and Nobel find a new journal, think, “This looks like fun.” Rinse and repeat. I have a collection of 10-15 journals, all with one or two pages done. I’ve tried everything from just blank books, prompts, and workbooks, but I just can’t do it.
I live with anxiety, ADHD, fibromyalgia, and chronic depression. Despite medication, anything can trigger my depression. I’ve been having financial issues for a while. Some of it was not of my doing, some of it was. I’ve never been good with money, I was never taught how. My bio-mother, being bipolar, would go through her manias where she would buy, buy, buy, but not pay bills. Trying to break that cycle for myself has been quite a struggle, to say the least. Those finances caught up with me when I changed jobs in June and went almost a month without a paycheck. Then I had to go off of my medication, cold turkey.
I take Adderall for my ADHD and Cymbalta for everything else. Since Adderall is a controlled substance, a patient has to see their doctor monthly to get it refilled. In between leaving my last job for my new one, I had a lapse in medical insurance and spent almost two months without my pills. To go cold turkey without my meds (which can actually be life threatening), the stress of starting a new job, and my financial issues, threw me into a depression. I knew it was coming. I could feel it. Instead of doing what I’ve always done, keep it all to myself and let it fester, I reached out. I reached out to my parents - my dad and step-mom.
My dad is amazing. He’s the second most important person in my life aside from my daughter. His partner, my step-mom, also has ADHD and a lot of the same mental issues that I have. She understood on a level that no one else around me did or could.
Shortly after I reached out, she came over to my house with some paint brushes, bottles of paint and said, “Paint.” I’ve never considered myself an abstract artist. I specialize realism, portraits, a lot of detail. My drawings and painting take a long time because there’s a lot of paying attention to detail and it gets to be very tedious. I’ve always gone into an art piece with a plan thinking, “this is what I have to do.” I always have an idea before I start. She knew that, but said, “Don’t think. Just feel. Just paint. Don’t think about a picture. Just add color. It’s just going to be you and paint. Nobody has to see it.”
When she left, I did just that. I squirted blobs of paint on the canvas and smooshed it in. What came out of it was eye opening. I had journaled. I had used that canvas and paint to show my feelings. As a visual person, that was eye-opening. It was tremendous. It was the way that I could journal, express how I feel inside.
This is that painting. It morphed into a kind of dark field of flowers. Reminiscent of the impressionist era. Monet, Van Gough, Matisse. I wasn’t thinking about flowers, but that’s what came out of it. They’re not detailed. They’re not even proportionate. They just are. Like me. I just… am.