Oh hey....day two and I'm already banging away at the keyboard at this steemit thing. Good sign, considering I tend to struggle at maintaining my website while maintaining the expectations of my employer. So...many of you may not yet know me or know the messed up year I've had last year. 2017 doled out punch after punch for a number of people while the previous year was equally as intense. For some it seemed to have been difficult, others a nightmare and ones that I personally relive day to day, or rather, night to night.
I used to be one of those types that were able to juggle multiple tasks with ease and have no difficulty finding motivation to create and get things done in order to achieve some task or the other. Then my Mom got sick.
For those who do not know, she was diagnosed with terminal cancer January of 2017 after suffering a crippling stroke. Come to find out it was spread throughout her body with a 2cm wide tumor in left side of her brain. Her speech was affected as well as some cognitive function. Her initial diagnosis was 10 weeks but she managed to surpass that by a few months. Meanwhile having to witness her physical deteriation as her body rebelled against her was extremely hard. Hard because I knew that she had a huge issue with relying on anyone to get things done. She was someone who fixed situations, helped her daughters when she could while sacrificing her own aspirations. I never knew the extent of this until after she passed and I had to go through the things she left behind. What she did leave behind were a series of journals expressing her sadness, her happiness, her internal struggles. Nearly a year later and I am still struggling with the loss of control of my waning depression (which I've dealt with, with mom's help, since I was 14), my own existential crisis, and re-evaluating how I view what is important and what is not.
I have always felt that my art exhibited a sense of that extreme control I always tried to manage in my life and had always preferred acrylic over watercolor simply because of that control. Same with drawing, only feeling comfortable using graphite with an eraser as a crutch. So now that everything feels scattered, shattered, disassociated...now I am somehow making myself okay with allowing the water and pigment to flow as it may, to teach myself patience by waiting for layers to dry before adding more. I am re-familiarizing myself with ink and allowing mistakes to happen and be okay with the results. I am trying to move past perfection and re-familiarize myself with...myself.