When Darkness Falls

Do you feel creative when you are going through dark moods? It varies with me. There are times when the emotional pain gives birth to profound work, work that could not have escaped the confines of my mind without the catalyst of discomfort.

These pieces for me reveal their power in stages; usually I am so drained after a session that I don’t look at the results right away. When I do, it is often in the context of brushing against them during the course of mundane activity. Perhaps I ‘m folding laundry when I glance at a canvas propped up nearbly. Often I am startled by what I see, there are often subliminal messages and issues imbedded in the piece. At times the juxtaposition of pattern can trigger an emotional response, a gut response, if you will.

I often watch videos about human behavior, and about mental illness, psychiatry, psychology. Always searching for the why, for the trigger, some way to see my defects in a scientific way. Is the answer staring me in the face in my art? Ultimately, I do feel alone in my internal struggles as someone with PTSD and mental illness. I think that is true with all who have been misdiagnosed, misunderstood and mistreated by the medical profession, by friends and even by those we expect to understand the most, our own families.

Is it any wonder that I obsess? Who else cares about what I feel, really? Who else is in any position to do anything for me, to ease my pain? If I am alone in these four walls an I not then also alone in my own skull?

In answer, I know there is One who cares. I hope he understands my need to put the pain on the page. After all, is he not the greatest Artist of all? And who would know the inner workings of the machine better than the Mechanic?

I can not convey to you in words the full weight, the immensity or the intensity of the battles that rage in me. In my art maybe I can. At any rate, it comes out onto the canvas. If I would not let it pour out of my finger tips, it would pour out of my pores in the night to stain the bedclothes in all the colors of God’s rainbow…