Drugs and Pills + Light Color and Theory Class. The College Freshmen
I felt healed after taking figure drawing at the Museum in my hometown. I reconciled with my dreams, and I stopped feeling guilty for living. Also, I had so many of them that I started to become numb to them all, which was a gift because it allowed me to let go. I was so confident at the beginning of freshman year. I accomplished what the priest told me to do: to be a normal girl and happy. I can live with my dreams and go about my day unaffected. And then the blacks out started happening. I just remember every time I would do artwork I would unconsciously go on the back burner and be with another preasence. The experience was usually calm and quiet, however, that didn’t stop it from being Grim or alarming. Especially when I would set out to do a particular assignment but paint something different.
My first assignment was to paint four artists I admire to try and understand their usage of color and why I admire them. The first piece of the nude woman on the bottom right is a Henri Matisse painting called “Reclining Nude.” Again, I truly loved the nude drawings Mattise did. There are so many of Matisse's nude paintings I think are beautiful and illustrate everything I love about art.
Reclining Nude, back
Henri Matisse Date: 1927
Media: oil, canvas
Then I went to make the next painting on the bottom left. I chose a random artist I liked the color of the painting, and I thought the painting was cool, and as I was painting, I felt myself go into a trance. As it was happening, I thought this was because I was painting abstract art.
In my dreams, my sight is abstract before I enter the other world. Before I went under, I heard a voice say, “Don’t paint this painting exactly. He would be terrible to you Nigger” It was a little alarming; however, I fully blacked out, and then I looked down, and I painted the two above paintings and was in the process of painting a black border around all of them. I don’t know where the other two came from. The voice told me that the top left is a portrait I did of her, and the top right is how Czenne should have painted a white and black person. She told me that she used to be racist and she did a lot of terrible things to Negros, and she was sorry about calling me a “Nigger” However, her death was the neglect of one of her friends. She doesn’t know if he did it on purpose or it was a mistake, but she said that when she was dying, he was smiling at her. She was mowed down in the field.
This assignment was to use monochromatic colors. However, the subject matter was supposed to be simple objects. I, of course, had a blackout, and in each image, different voices told me what each image was. The upper left said to me that she was a transvestite who was unfairly punished and eaten by pagens. The upper right was a fascinating man who would run away from demons and look through a keyhole. When I was in a trance painting his eye, I decided to leave out the keyhole because someone else in this world drew him with a keyhole. The bottom left is a still life of a serial work table, and the bottom right is the woman who will try to kill me.
We were learning about cubism during the class, and the assignment was to paint simple objects using cubism techniques. However, I went into a trance and painted these four images. The first top left is supposed to be the invisible man. The top right is a portrait of a woman who was murdered in a salovic country. I also did a full-body portrait of her. The image in the upper right was how she wanted her face to look and how she wanted her hands to be, but the killer didn’t listen to her. The portrait of the same man is at the bottom. It’s funny because I don’t fully see the person when I get in these trances. Sometimes, it’s very blocky, then like a camera, it zooms in, and the imagery gets clearer. The bottom two images depict that.
I don’t know what evokes the trances because I don’t intentionally do anything to make it happen. I honestly don’t know how to start and stop it. I didn’t want to be an artist with only artwork based on these experiences. That is why these two images are so refreshing in my eyes. It is where I wanted to go artistically before things got so out of control. Leading me to decide to stop doing art entirely in my 20s and 30s. I also don’t talk about any of this to my family. I feel it’s so taxing and not something I wanted to encourage.
The top artist was an ode image, and it is an ode to Henri Matisse's Nude in Studio. However, I wanted the woman to look more like me. So I decided to paint her with brown skin, and I added a cloth to look more like we were getting a personal look at this fictional person’s life. I thought Henri Mattise’s nude imagery was great. It was getting a fly-on-the-wall view of what was happening inside another person’s home.
Nude in Studio
Henri Matisse Date: 1899
Media: oil on paper
The second portrait is of the same woman but a different view. Again, the image at the bottom is to imitate the beauty of women doing simple, intimate things in their homes like Henri Matisse did in his paintings.
This is an image of how my dreams start. It is not exactly like this every time, but it is an explosion of colors. Then, everything stops, and forms begin to appear.
This portrait is of a woman who I would always see in my dreams and blackouts; she would give me advice. Her overall presence was motherly, and she would explain things to me when things got scary. This is a portrait of how her killer left her, and she talked about her death retrospectively and had an interesting perspective on how you should be more kind to people who are feeling hostile towards you. She was killed by someone who was very jealous of her. The woman’s body was left on display for everyone to see because her killer felt she was a show-off. I know I had many conversations with her asking if I could have a portrait of her not dead but maybe in a chair, but she would refuse. The only thing she would allow is the one of her face and hand I did. The last time I heard from her, I was 29. I always hoped for the best for her.
This is a still life of a serial killer’s home. I always found these presences interesting because they killed for no rhyme or reason. There were so many of them in this world, and they would never have an honest answer to why they would kill people. It was just because. These people always scared me the most because there was no motive. However, I know every time I do a still life that I do not remember, it is of a serial killer’s home. My freshman drawing class was filled with still lifes, which is probably why I don’t remember attending the class.
This is an abstract image of what it looks like when I begin to leave the other world. Again, it doesn’t look exactly like this because it’s an explosion of colors, which is never the same. I guess you can say I have endless inspiration for abstract paintings.
This is another abstract image of what it looks like when I begin to leave the other world. Again, it doesn’t look exactly like this because it’s an explosion of colors, however before everything explodes everything colliedes.