A grief observed...
April 23, 2010 my mom
unexpectedly passed away. The immense sorrow and grief that followed has and
will continue to impact me for the rest of my life. The grieving process is almost impossible to understand for
yourself, yet alone explain to an outside party. Grief is something so intimate
and personal that I felt it difficult to relate even to my own Father, who had lost
the same loved one. Many times I
found myself alone in my room crying, writing, praying to the only One who
truly knew the depths of my heart.
For God “created my inmost being. He knit me together in my mother’s
womb”. I rested in that truth
every night, knowing that all was going to be okay because the One who
carefully created me in my mother’s womb knew me better than anyone on this
earth ever could and would be there every step of the way.
I am going to create a series
of self-portraits that embody the stages of grief and realizations that I went
through after the death of my mom with the hope that I can dig deep to deal
with unspoken emotions and learn more about myself and how I grieve, along the
way. I attempted my first
self-portrait in Hollis’ class last year and was greatly challenged by it. I realized that I perceived my outward
appearance to be something that was very different from what others saw. I drew it based on the way I felt at
that period of my life and assumed that my demeanor correlated with those
feelings. Unfortunately, I have
learned that I am far too good at masking how I really feel, so through these
works I will force myself to express how I felt/feel. I would like to explore my thoughts and be really honest with
myself. These self-portraits will
be for personal growth as well as a statement of faith to my friends and family
and show them what I have struggled with and how God has set me free of so many
things. I might experiment with
oil on this one and use actual clips from my prayer journal in each painting or
possibly just for the title.
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