“Who cares?” A Confessional Series

“Who cares?”

9×12 in mixed media

I’ve been putzing around with art for a long time trying to figure out who I am as an artist. I still don’t know the answer to that question, but I think the discovery is the fun part. As the new year leapt upon us, I thought about what I wanted to accomplish in 2025. I’ve made a lot of lofty plans but for art I wanted to keep the heat off. This year is all about figuring out my voice. Establishing my own style in this medium.

I’m a writer by nature so I’ve kind of organically started incorporating it into my artwork. For me, there are still things I can’t say with visual art that I can with language and vice versa. In this piece, I’ve pulled directly from my journal and in a confessional fashion have spilled some of my guts. Those guts now live as a backdrop to a beautiful, young woman - lost and contemplative. Below is the full text of the background:

“When I look in the mirror, what looks back? A little girl? A hideous monster covered in my own blood. A snarling traitor hell bent on my own demise. An indefatigable wish to be someone different. I could change my hair, my clothes, my makeup, my speech, my gait. Would I be worth love then? Or am I still whore, villain, servant no matter what? Speak truth to power. What is my truth which might lend me power? Agonizing over the fruitlessness of my life long endeavors. When you spend every day pushing paper, punching keys, sitting in meetings, drained of your life force, robbed of your creative energy where is meaning? Is this the meaning of life? Sitting in an office, praying for freedom bathed in fluorescents? Who have I become but the culmination of all my disappointments? All my failures hovering around me as ghastly specters taunting and reveling in the shell of a woman I’ve become…

My dad’s birthday is today. I dreamed he was alive again but I had all the memories of his passing. I was a conflicted mix of happiness that he was back and fear to relive his death all over again. Writing gave me a voice when I could not speak. I struggled as an adolescent and I struggle even today to express myself in a way that is authentic to how I really feel. I think my dad saw this in me. I don’t know why I think that. I have no specific memory that I can point to that speaks to this belief, but every time I reflect on my childhood and my wounds around communication, I think of him. Like the two are tied together. Not that he caused it but that he felt the pain too. It feels lonely. Isolated. Trapped within ourselves and feeling as though no one really sees us. Feeling unloved and unlovable even though there’s love all around us.

-Journal entry 8/20/21”