Holly Armishaw (31)

-Fading Away-

-Desolation-

-The Death of Self-

-The Migraine-

-Symptom Six-

-Pharmacology-

-Lucid Dreaming 2-

-The Panic Attack-

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La Femme Tragique

By Holly Armishaw

At three A.M. I awoke suddenly one night, I had the most excruciating chest pain. My chest was so tight that I felt that if I took a deep breath, something in my heart would pop or a rib would crack. I became aware of an intense pain in my arm and slowly I lost feeling in my legs and fingers. My breathing was shallow and my lips grew numb. I felt that I was beginning to lose consciousness. I grabbed for the phone and minutes later I was in the hospital emergency room. They performed an ECG and asked a lot of questions and came to the conclusion that my heart was fine – I had suffered an intense panic attack. This was just to be the first of many.

Indeed there were issues in my life, my relationship, my job, illness in friends and family, but I thought I was holding everything together fine. However, the body has different ideas about how it can handle stress. Emotional sickness is like water – if you block one path, it will find another channel to travel through. I began having migraines and panic attacks so severe that they have landed me in the hospital ER three times. These conditions and symptoms became so debilitating that I could no longer carry out my managerial responsibilities at work. This was a blessing in disguise; I had to quit my job and at last I was free to be an artist again.

I desperately needed that time off and my body made it possible. I spent the next 6 months attempting to self-medicate, sleeping through the days, generally living a lifestyle of risk-taking , escapism and indulgence. Thoughts of suicide were common and painful, while sleep, my only refuge. Spells of debilitating migraines, chest pain, fainting, numbness, tingling, nausea, feelings of floating and leaving my body have been something that I attempt to hide or ignore, until my body gives out and I end up in an ambulance on the way to the ER again. Rather than continuing to cure the symptoms as my doctors have been doing, I have taken it upon myself to cure the causes. The first step is an act of defiance against my family values. Rather than sweep things under the carpet my first act is the disclosure with this body of work. “The suffering artist” is a timeless icon of beauty and tragedy in art history and film, poetry, etc. and it is, unfortunately, alive and real. Mood disorders are an area that affects many of us in the fine arts, and are hence, important for discussion.

Holly Armishaw

Branka Djordjević (30)

-self portrait : (extra)ordinary numbers-

Branka Djordjević

CaroH (29)

-self-portrait: fear-

CaroH writes:

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I have used a red veil as a symbol of my suffering and also to hide that body that I was disliking and protect myself I guess. At the time when I shot this I was suffering emotionally. I had enough of the way I was living my life and needed to come out of the closet and confront my fear of becoming who I wanted to be, a fine art photographer. The best way for me to break the ice was to put myself naked with the veil and look at me as I was in the mirror, and that is what I did, all these shots ( first part of my self-portrait) were shot with the camera looking at my reflection in that mirror.

If you notice I don’t, on most of the photo, look in the mirror, it was at that time really difficult for me to do. My face is hidden with my shoulder, and the veil is reaching my face, I am looking down. I am afraid and I am cold. Will I be able to become CaroH and be that women that I know I am. By not looking in the mirror and by hiding my face, I am trying to hide my suffering, and who I was, that women who had enough of who she was. This shooting did me really good, it took me 3 months before I could even work on the photo, I needed to really disconnect from who I had been and dare to be CaroH. And I finally dare. All the way, I don’t regret a single minute of it.

I can tell that sometime it takes pain to grow and to understand the message life is sending. I think I am now starting to understand this message!

But CaroH still has a long path to climb before she becomes and feels that she is really CaroH.

www.larznangel.com

Jennifer Kosharek (28)

Jennifer writes:

After 36 years I am finally happy with my body.

Jennifer's Mail Art Blog

Wee Hoo's Looking Glass

Joyce Polance (27)

-Albatross-

84x68 inches.

Joyce writes:

'Albatross' is about anorexia - both as a physical and emotional state. The painting depicts 2 women, one carrying the other on her back. The healthy figure on the bottom is healing and strong, yet she still has the feelings and memories of what she has been through. She carries them with her.

Joyce Polance

Sarah Dees (26)

-Cancer Woman-

Acrylic on Canvas, 38 x 46 inches.

-Hope Shining Through-
Acrylic on canvas, 18 by 24 inches.

-Breath of Life-
Acrylic on canvas, 18 by 24 inches.


Sara writes:

This painting Cancer Woman was made while I was going through cancer treatment for colorectal cancer and I didn't yet know if I would survive. I painted it to show at the annual Cancer Survivor's Celebration and after the event I donated it to the Gulfcoast Oncological Foundation in thanks for a grant they gave me to help pay my mortgage for a few months while I was in treatment. It now hangs in the Oncology Ward of St. Anthony's hospital in St. Petersburg, Florida and I hear the staff and patients really love it.

It's is very symbolic and it was difficult to do, and I could never have created it if I had not experienced the reality of cancer treatment. I wanted to show beauty, strength and resilience, while also showing pain, suffering and emotional trauma. The rich colors are meant to symbolize pain, and the flowers are cancer tumors. She is "everywoman" going through cancer. Her hair is falling out and her breast is missing because of breast cancer. She has a port in her chest like I did, and the cactus flowers show the burns like I had from radiation. She is suffering, but she is still beautiful, facing forward, with hope, a survivor. I mean for her to show the hurt she feels, yet still inspire. I used my own body for the model but my daughter posed for the face. It's kind of abstract, in a way.

For a long time I was ashamed of my cancer and wouldn't tell anyone and took great care to cover up my port and then my scar. I didn't want to talk about it. At this point, I am finally okay with the experience and proudly showing my scar as my badge of courage, my survival. Now that I am 3 years past treatment I am ready to make a new painting, and planning on entering it in the Lilly Oncology on Canvas exhibition, to show what I feel like now, a little farther down the road as a cancer survivor. I feel that the journey is continuing and my perspective keeps changing and evolving. It is not over, and although I am "cancer free", I still deal with side effects of cancer treatments daily, my body is damaged, and I am a long way from what you could consider recovery. After the initial euphoria of survival passed, I sank into the long hard road of surviving survival, which is another chapter in the story. I'll send the new painting when it comes.

They came November 15th, 2010:

About Hope Shining Through & Breath of Life:

What I like about the paintings is the progression of time, the idea that things get better, and there is survival possible, of the body, mind, heart and spirit.

Sara Dees

Sara Dees Art on OncoLink

Sara Dees has a fb-page 'Cancer-Financial Assistance, Resources, Scholarships, Info'

Suzanne Marshall (25)

Suzanne writes about the Mastectomy Quilt:

'The Mastectomy' is my first attempt at making a non-traditional quilt. Puzzle pieces depict the mammogram, horror at the diagnosis, surgery, recovery, refusing breast implants, and enjoyment of life in spite of a changed body.

Suzanne Marshall

Alia El-Bermani (24)

-Self Consumption-

16” x 24”, oil on canvas, 2000

Alia's site and blog

LuAnn Palazzo (23)

as I once turned inward to create
I now turn outward to evolve

the body curves where it never did
and hides surprises in its folds

the falling away of possibilities
brings the promise of others

the loss, the gain–
not really a pause at all


www.thedesigndiva.net

Sofia Kapnissi (22)

a-sleep

together we walk

Sofia Kapnissi writes:

The search for the identity of the physical and metaphysical female body has been present in my work more than a decade. It has found though a more concrete expres­sion since 2005 when I started the series of drawings “360 days”, a visual diary of myself/ a woman who makes a full turn (360 degrees) around herself. There, the body revealed its capacity to be different each day according to its intellectual and emotional positioning. The most recent works under the title "The ups and downs of motherhood" talk about a different beauty, there where the change itself has led to another level of body- conscience.

www.kapnissi.kymaweb.com

Faustine Puras (21)

-from "moments"-

From spaces, landscapes, but mostly rusty surfaces, Faustine Puras develops natural environments, interior experiences or external views.
All final works are photographs, none of the original works remain as such, but the photograph itself becomes the new piece.

video:

-Inslapen/Falling Asleep-
Physical changes of a child during the 'falling asleep'-faze.

More on Faustine's work:

www.puras.be

Daria Endresen (20)

-zu warten-

-kevlar soul-

-protection-

Daria writes:

The Other Side Of Eden

Oak trees grow to be hundreds of years old. They only have to produce one single tree every hundred years in order to procreate ... The acorns fell on the roof then too ... they kept falling and falling ... and dying and dying ... And I understood that everything that used to be beautiful about Eden was perhaps hideous ... Now I could hear what I couldn't hear before - the cry of all the things that are to die.

http://dariaendresen.com

Absurdas (19)

-Exquisite Corpse-

The "Absurdas" write:

Our group of artists is called "Absurdas," we are a loosely organized group of artists living around the San Francisco Bay Area. We meet to work on art pieces and to learn new techniques from each other. Sometimes we exhibit together on a particular theme.

Exquisite corpse (also known as exquisite cadaver or rotating corpse) resulted from a method by which a collection of words or images is collectively assembled, the result being known as the exquisite corpse or cadavre exquis in French. In this technique, each collaborator adds to a composition in sequence, either by following a rule (e.g. "The adjective noun adverb verb the adjective noun") or by being allowed to see the end of what the previous person contributed.

http://absurdasart.blogspot.com/

Mariana Palova (18)

-incapaz de ser libre/unable to be free-

The exit is there, opened for you, you want to go out, to feel the freedom... but you did not notice, that it's you yourself, who is blocking your own escape.

La salida está ahí, abierta para ti, tu quieres salir, sentir la libertad... pero no notaste, que tu eres el que está obstruyendo tu propio escape.

-la moda/fashion-

Under the black hat, under the mask of superficiality.

Bajo el sombrero negro, bajo la máscara de la superficialidad.

-Sognatore (Soñador)/Dreamer-

Separated from my own body, very far away from my heart, dreaming, going very high, but always keeping a way to go back.

Separada de mi propio cuerpo, muy lejos de mi corazón, soñando, yendo muy alto, pero siempre conservando una forma de regresar.

MarianaPalova

Karen Elizabeth Peters (17)

Karen writes:

My struggle began slowly, with morning stiffness and sore hands. As weeks and months ebbed away, so did my health. I went from being an active person to someone who could only mange one small task and then needed to rest for quite a while. It came on gradually, but one day I noticed my life had changed. I couldn't hold a pen and write more than few sentences, my hand would seize up for hours. Painting was out of the question and that broke my heart. I could no longer take my dog on long walks through the woods or around the neighbourhood. My hands, feet, knees and wrists hurt constantly. I couldn't even use a can opener! There were visible changes in the shape of my joints. The fatigue was brutal. I would sleep for 10 or 11 hours and yet wake up looking and feeling exhausted. My symptoms seemed nebulous but I have a wonderful family doctor who felt it might be rheumatoid arthritis. Tests upon tests pointed to that conclusion. I was put on a waiting list to see a specialist. While waiting, everything got worse. I lost weight because quite frankly I didn't have the energy or appetite to eat. I worked but often came home so tired and sore I could have thrown up. It even hurt to steer the car or move my foot from accelerator to brake. On December 18th, a day before my 43rd birthday, I got answers. It was rheumatoid arthritis and it was an aggressive case. The medicines all sounded scary and harmful but what choice did I have if I wanted to get my life back? I started on low dose chemotherapy and other medicines to slow down the debilitating effects of the disease. I vowed to do everything in my power to get myself better. The specialist said yoga, walking, getting enough quality sleep and eating well would all make a difference. I became a coach, of sorts, for myself and started a regimen of taking good care of myself. I learned to pace myself, not an easy task for me. As a naturally born type A personality, I have a very hard time leaving things undone. I learned my energy is a precious commodity that needs to be well managed. Some days the house looks cleaner than it does on others but I always serve good, healthy meals (I bulk bake on my good days). I make yoga, even five minutes on tough days, a staple of my life. Each night I'm in bed by 9:30.

It's been almost six weeks and I am seeing such a difference in both my symptoms and myself. As much as it has been a struggle, I've had a few "ah ha" moments. I discovered that the physical was only half the battle. I looked within myself and realized that in order to really make the most of my healing I had to mentally realign myself. It has taught me to flow with life and to release all resistance, all negativity. I have no choice but to accept myself as I am. I'm finding this courtesy is being extended to others as well. Out of my illness came a sort of liberation.

www.paintingcanada.ca

Amanda Rae (16)

Amanda writes:

Art making has been a way to express my self and my experiences and has been a healing method. My Art practice assists me in problem solving, as a communication tool, and as an expression and externalization of issues and conflicts that concern me. The ‘making of’ has become an increasingly important element, enabling me to transform painful emotions and experiences into creative energy.

Amanda's Saatchi-gallery.

Joan Harrison (15)

Joan writes:

When I was recovering from cancer and unsure of my survival I made this image called the "Transference of Motherhood." Male sea horses carry their young and this sea horse was a gift from my husband. With this image I entrusted the care of our daughters to him as I healed and tried to find a way to live in a body that had been invaded, then cut, slashed, poisoned and burned in the name of survival. With this image I entrusted him with surrogate motherhood.

www.joanharrison.com

Venus Raven (14)

-Love and Light-

Battle Song


LOVE CONSTANT BEYOND DEATH

The final shadow that will close my eyes
will in its darkness take me from white day
and instantly untie the soul from lies
and flattery of death, and find its way,
and yet my soul won’t leave its memory
of love there on the shore where it has burned:
my flame can swim cold water and has learned
to lose respect for laws’ severity.
My soul, whom a God made its prison of,
my veins, which a liquid humor fed to fire,
my marrows, which have gloriously flamed,
will leave their body, never their desire;
they will be ash but ash in feeling framed;
they will be dust but will be dust in love.

(Francisco Gomez de Quevedo, 1580-1645. Translated by Willis Barnstone)

Venus writes:

The more important a certain subject is to us, the more difficult it is to address it. For me this poem, although written by another and especially by a male, presents the epitome of the burden that females have been carrying throughout history and the depths that our passion leads us to when put under restraint. This is a deeply feminine perspective, to endure pain and overcome all obstacles, especially when being in love. Being a female is essentially a dual role of life-giver and peaceful warrior and the deepest connection to the feminine displays a magnanimity in both enduring hardships and sacrificing all that it takes to reach that balance between the womb and the divinity it embodies.

http://www.ravenus9.deviantart.com

Grace Graupe Pillard (13)

The Four Graces:

Grace writes about the video:

THE FOUR GRACES, A Video in four chapters speaking to my obsession with time and the fact that I embrace the "dance of life" despite aging.

CHAPTER 1 – I CAN STILL DANCE AND PAINT
A self-portrait depicting my passion for painting, and my dance through that process over a lifetime; all of which involves risk and a baring of the truth as I see it. The paintings in this video are part of my "Desecrated Landscape" series.
CHAPTER 2 – THE SLOW DANCE OF TIME
My obsession with the passing of time as I perform a "slow" dance weaving my body in and out of the rain, clouds and earth.
CHAPTER 3 – A REBEL DANCING AFTER ALL THESE YEARS – RISE UP!
Dancing against a backdrop of urban images of graffiti, a beautiful art form which does not get the respect that it should. The personal and the political are interlaced as time speeds on.
CHAPTER 4 – PAINTING EXPOSED
This video depicts an artist dancing exposed and vulnerable. Art openings, pre-painting rituals, the act of painting, are the focus of this video.

 Floating:

Floating in a sea of water, snow, fire, earth and sky. Dealing metaphorically with the subconscious memories of my grandparents as well as other family members' deaths in a concentration camp during Hitler's Third Reich in Germany. This piece addresses my feelings of aging and vulnerability as I am literally "bared" and the ever-present nature of change be it constructive or destructive.

I will not be Intimidated:

I Will Not Be Intimidated! from Grace Graupe Pillard on Vimeo

This video specifically speaks to the way the aging female flesh is often viewed as not worthy of being seen in public; women often wrap scarves on their necks, prefer long sleeve tops, and often do not wear comfortable shorts even in the summer heat.

Grace Graupe Pillard

Clarity Haynes (12)

-Flight-

charcoal and pastel on paper, 50" x 66", 2007.

Clarity writes:

My work is based on the body; I am always creating portraits whether the model is physically in front of me or not. This piece is from a series that has moved away from my more clinical nude portraits to portray allegorical/dreamy presences. I was thinking about the power of the Crone archetype and the sensual beauty of hair as lived experience, as unbridled energy.

www.clarityhaynes.com

Susan Shulman (11)

-Mother Earth-

oils and oil sticks on canvas 30"x36"

-A Fish out of Water-

oil sticks on stonehenge paper, 4'x5'

Susan writes:

-Mother Earth-

I was thinking about motherhood and the effect is had on my body. So I decided to show one painting called Mother Earth. This was painted with oil and oil sticks at a time when my daughter was an enfant. I was a fist-time mother with all the angst that goes along with that time. I had gained about 50 pounds with the help of Haagen-Dazs vanilla ice cream and an OBGYN who encouraged me to enjoy this time and not worry about weight. No wonder my daughter loves all ice cream except vanilla. It just dawned on me.

Well, after I gave birth, it was quite surprising that not all the weight disappeared. That was a shock to me. And, no matter what I did for the first year, nothing would move. I also was so aware of my enormous breasts. They were not small to start with. Well, I had to adjust to my new body and I felt like I was a character out of Jack Chalker's "Midnight at the Well of Souls" science fiction adventure. I had morphed into Mother Earth. I was living in a new and different world. In this painting, I painted myself lying on the soft ground in a primitive kind of depiction. Almost like an animal waiting to feed its litter. All the babies are various images of my daughter. As always, I have my guardian angel or in this case a fairy helping me. I also have the past gods on the mountains to the left watching and guiding me. The ship above me is being chased by fish. It is the death ship. The ghost of my life past. The woman kneeling on my stomach is actually drawing a hopscotch game on me since my body wasn’t mine anymore and she could and the imp near my chin was ready to appear and cause more havoc on my new life. Even today when I look at this work I feel the joy of motherhood and the heaviness of that time when my body was no longer mine, but owned by the universe when I joined the Mother Earth club.

-A Fish out of Water-

I added this piece which came a few years after Mother Earth where I was back to my normal life except traveling a lot to New York which is the imagery in the bottom left. It is called a Fish out of water because I was not sure about the life I was living. so, just to get to the point of self image, you will see in the close up an image of a woman (me) with a tortous shell coat and inside you see my body back to normal. This was symbolic that inside us all is that beautiful woman who has always been there but never wanted to shine or show it. That sometimes life takes us to experience many challenges but inside we are all that same person we always were. Next to that image is a couple in a sardine tin. Well, I will not elaborate on that except to say I felt canned in! And, yes the large image is me. A self portrait of myself as the sirene blue goddess crossing the oceans of time and space. The fish within my body are my spirits, my life, and my religion keeping me safe and guiding me through my journeys.

http://www.susanshulman.com

Lina Eve (10)

-Lush Kate-

Lina writes:

I'm an Australian artist and photographer, and have many images of women. The one I'm sending you is of a friend called Kate, who I photographed a few years back. She's since died of stomach cancer, but she was such a glorious woman and totally adored by her guy right to the end. We called this shot, "Lush Kate."

lina eve

Juliette Verberk (9)

-knickers-

45 x 120 cm

acrylics on hardboard

Juliette writes:

I use just normal everyday things to construct my images. Obviously my own female body is part of that and I use it or parts of it in a mix with other common objects. By mixing those different normalities, I try to construct an image that creates it's own reality, slightly different than ours.

www.julietteverberk.nl

Zoe Hiigli-Self Portraits (8)

Once there was a DJ named Zoe...

happy place
 

 when a problem comes along, you must whip it

 radiohead

i dont mind the rain

last night, i realized...

love yourself

i dont wanna leave
 

 parallel lines

and I feel pretty, pretty enough for you...
 

new years dress


Zoe writes:

I think every woman should have beautiful pictures of herself... naked and clothed. I have found so much power in myself through my self portraits.

www.zoehiigli.com

Tamar Kasparian (7)

 

"

Tamar writes:

These are paintings I made with my hair. I made these paintings last year when my 17-year relationship with a man ended. They're about love, sex, memories in my body but also about something that my body has never lived (having a child)."

A description of Tamar Kasparian's work:

"Creating, not to know who one is, but may be what or who one is becoming. Tamar's drawings and paintings are an experimental description of a mutation. What or who are we during this endless process? Growing into an organic structure, whose roots disperse while having a great hold on the earth, a living being, serene like a tree, with a sharp contour but whose inner nature seethes, an empty space marked with the stamp of an absent one. Strange feeling of aspiration and of dizziness born from this emptiness, and strange feeling opposite and also vigorous of fullness, abundance, intensity, when the background of the paintings fills the existing space and transforms it in a matrix of energies.”

tamarkasparian.net

Anki King (6)

-Shadow-

-Strength-

-Lullaby I-II-III-

These paintings are part of a series you can see here. Some of the pieces of that series will be part of a 2-women exhibit named "Naked" at the Lichtenstein Center for the Arts in MA in November 2010.

www.ankiking.com