Raw Around the Edges
*Due to the size, shipping this piece is more complicated so please get in touch with me if you are not in my local delivery locations and are interested in purchasing.*
Drawing a blank, I asked my mom, “What would I even paint about right now – being a working mom with four kids who all want to do things all the time?!” I was joking and oversimplifying, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized how universal those feelings are: overwhelm, unraveling, exhaustion, overextension, maybe even spiraling – and so little of it is in your control. When life is going a million miles an hour and all you can control is yourself and your response, where does that leave you when you have nothing left to give?
A picture came to me of my own exhausted eyes – the ones that look at me through the mirror every day. The ones I look into and wonder if I can muster the strength to do it again: to give and to give and to give, while hoping I can hold it together. Eyes surrounded by torn edges. Edges that are raw and tender, vulnerable and in need. And everything was blue. So I picked up my brush, my antique books and piles of repurposed papers, my needle and thread, and got to work.
Each page was chosen to reflect a broad spectrum of the human experience: diary entries, personal notes, letters, pages from poetry books, textbooks, even the Bible. There is sheet music, my own old sketches, a dress pattern, and discarded fragments once considered trash. All of these add up to so many lives, lives that were full and sometimes overwhelming, exhausting, broken, bruised.
But I don’t believe we are hopeless. Those aching edges aren’t the only thing we’re given. The gold leaf and stitching point us to a deeper place. Even in the sinking there is meaning and purpose and hope. A time of challenge with no fruit born from it is rare, and I think each of those sometimes painful edges is traced with the promise of mending. A path we didn’t expect, a hand that helped us up, a kind word in a dark moment. Stitch by stitch we weave through our lives and we carry on. Rest will come, the torn edges will heal, and our scars will be born into a new day.
22.5x30”
Watercolor, antique found paper, gold leaf, and hand stitching
*Due to the size, shipping this piece is more complicated so please get in touch with me if you are not in my local delivery locations and are interested in purchasing.*
