Wednesday, July 8, 2009

The Feminist Series

I seem to have momentarily escaped my case of being "down." Of course, writing about it brings me right back to the start, but nevertheless: here is a portion of a message I've just written to a friend. It reminded me of the way I write in my blog, so I figured I would just take directly from it and give it to all of you to read. I love sharing my personal life with others, apparently. Ha.

"Today was much better than yesterday. It's sometimes really depressing to go to sleep not knowing what I will wake up to. Every once in a while I seem to get a nice relief from myself: I will feel happy physically and mentally. But anything is a trigger for me to be downcast for days straight. Reading is a really good distraction, I have a natural tendency to become very involved with the books I am reading. So during the hours of reading I can just let my heart have a break, and sometimes I'll even stop thinking about myself during notreading time long enough to dwell on the problems of my book characters. Blessing.

Rehearsal is fun, it gives me company which is always welcome. I've been trying to watch dumb movies that aren't COMPLETELY about love and happy endings. Like Devil Wears Prada. Although I'd prefer Mean Girls which has been lost. I haven't painted in a couple of days which makes me think that maybe I am avoiding it subconsciously (on purpose). I actually pondered in my diary last night whether maybe my artwork had started projecting back at me. If that makes sense? Like, the "clouds" of my paintings came directly from my own clouded sense of everything. Just that weird numbness and sadness that was devastatingly obvious in most of my paintings until I went back through and gave them more life. At first I was getting everything inside of me out and onto my canvas. But now the art has taken on a life of it's own. One more thing that I've lost control of. When I mentioned the other day that I would name the series Battered, Bruised for the women's show, I did not realize it would take such a toll on my mind. With the realization that my clouds were also bruises came a freakout of the brain repeating loudly to itself that "I am bruised, I am bruised." Since then I have avoided going downstairs to paint." Of course, I find it fascinating in a macabre way that art could ever have enough power to literally take over for the artist herself. Truly incredible.



Thoughts on this? They are welcome.
Comment here
or
Email me at: sketchstephyoung@hotmail.com
or
Facebook me: facebook.com/sketchstephyoung





endpost.

1 comment:

diana said...

Soulmates?
I've escaped my downness too, but I'm going to try to make it last more than momentarily. Though...your reasons are pretty much better than mine.

Alright so!
Maybe try to find amazingly fantastic triggers as well as the unavoidable bad ones.
For me, I've been listening to a lot of music. With the new stuff I become so absorbed with its greatness that it makes me happy, and I the old music takes on new definition to correspond with my current life, and even if my current life is undesirable in some way, I am awed by the correspondence that i find with some songs, and learn to exist peacefully with these sad companions, thriving just from the fact that every emotion is so widespread.
Try it!
Reading--if you need a good book, right now I'm reading Doctor Zhivago and its more than great, i really recommend it.
as for movies...i never try to escape the genres i want to avoid, so i cant help!

Oh and most importantly, the art you create when you are most driven by a certain emotion will probably turn out to be some of the more amazing stuff when you can look back at it with a decent mindset. So maybe when youre painting, embrace every bad feeling and try to splatter it out with brushstrokes. It may become a blue period one day!
:)

(is it normal for these comments to be like jjust as long as the blog? lol)