Sometimes paintings emerge as attempts to convey a somatic experience that can’t totally be conveyed.
At times, in pain, I’ve been aware of a feeling that there was a deep empty place where my heart should be.
What I’ve learned (and what keeps being really hard and inconvenient) about feelings is that denying, suppressing, arguing with, or telling them they don’t make sense or shouldn’t be happening is… unfortunately not helpful.
What seems to be helpful again and again is to slowly allow them to be known without judgment, to be met with kindness. They seem then to transform on their own, the way rain always does manage to somehow become sunshine again, then rain once more.
My hope is that this painting will remind me to be compassionate with pain and confusion wherever I encounter it, in myself and others.