my-brush-with-life

Thoughts On Palm Sunday

Sun, 02 Apr 2023 16:43:55 +0100

Some thoughts on this Palm Sunday 2019

Today the Christian world commemorates the entering of Jesus into Jerusalem. In fulfillment of prophecy, Jesus entered Jerusalem on the back of a donkey, was hailed as a king, and honored with the laying of palm fronds along his path.

Now, Jesus wasn't dumb. He knew what was really coming. He didn't get caught up in the adulation. He didn't tally up the palm fronds and equate the number to his self worth. He knew what his worth was. He was the Son of God, come to be the Savior of the World. Just not the way the world had hoped.

But me, I'm no Jesus. It's so easy for me to get caught up in adulation. It's so easy for me to equate my worth with likes, swipes, show acceptances, painting sales, etc.

It's hard when I am disappointed in life, love, and art. I want to say, " But you liked this, you liked me, I was important, I felt like a queen and now I'm nothing!" It's hard for me to remember that oftentimes the triumphal entry is not the end of the story, but a precursor to the beginning of a deeper and more difficult task ahead that will probably look nothing like the world expects it to.

The work is gritty, un-pretty, unsettling, fierce, and painful. It's not glamorous. It makes the people around me uncomfortable. It's make ME uncomfortable!

I want to get to heaven without having to go through my figurative Gethsemanes first! Gethsemanes are not ego stroking experiences. They crush the ego. But the breaking lets the light in. I'm not sure how many Gethsemanes I need to go through before I become more like Jesus, but I know one thing. I'm committed to keep going.

It's hard and I don't like it. I want to be on the donkey's back with people cheering me on, but right now I just feel like the.....donkey (see how I didn't swear there?)

It hurts.

So I am grateful to know that this is not the end, that there is more to the story, and that at the end of the garden and the grave there is the REAL triumph. I'm looking forward to that.

(Painting by Jerry Williams)

Hosannas and Hallelujahs

I wanted to add some thoughts about the space between the hosannas and the hallelujahs.

Hosanna is a plea for God to save. Hallelujah is a praise to the Lord for the hope of salvation and exaltation. And in between, there is work to do that is very difficult and uncomfortable. For example, if you're using the butterfly as an allegory for growth; the caterpillar goes from worm to cocoon to butterfly, but in the cocoon, the caterpillar actually turns to goo. Goo. She doesn't just metamorphosize gracefully. She actually turns to a mass of goo. Her between is the goo stage. She is completely undone. That sounds pretty uncomfortable.

Right now the whole world is in that in-between space. I have been in and out of that space in micro-cycles for many years now, moving in and out of small and large what I'll optimistically call "growth opportunities", waiting for what I assumed would be the big and final hallelujah. Some mythical event that I had in my mind that would be the end to my sadness and the beginning of my joy. I'm not sure where I got this idea, but it was there. What are some of your hallelujahs? Getting married? Having a child? Getting that job? Buying that car? Being done with cancer treatments? Achieving your PR in a marathon?

I thought I was there a few weeks ago when, after searching for a house to buy for several months, I finally found one. It was a treasure box of vintage adorableness that made my soul sing! Hard to find in Southern Utah. Surely I was led to it and there were other miracles around the process that I won't talk about here. I put my money down and began to move forward with boldness and certainty, feeling pretty proud of myself.

But then, I didn't feel okay about it. I tried to push through the feelings, sure it was just the discomfort of stepping into something unknown, but my discomfort grew to a level of spiritual panic and body reaction that I have learned to not dismiss. So I withdrew my offer. It broke my heart. I didn't and don't understand it. All I knew is that the moment I withdrew the offer, my body and spirit were at peace.

I was hoping that that house would take me from hosanna to hallelujah. But it didn't and now the whole world has changed and I don't know what's going to happen or if I should even keep looking for a house.

And you know what? I'm so done looking for events or people to take me to the hallelujah. I'm done.

I know there are lots of people in pain and fear right now. I know people are worried. Some people can't even get to the hosanna let alone through the space between hosanna to a hallelujah.

I just want to offer this in case it might help someone. I don't think life is as linear as we wish it to be. I've been in a place with no hosanna. I've also had hallelujahs. I don't know where I am right now. I seem to be simultaneously holding all those spaces inside myself. And I think that's okay. I think it's okay to give ourselves permission to be doubting Thomas AND grieving Mary AND rejoicing Peter all at once.

It's okay to have hope that everything and everyone will be okay AND be terrified that it won't. It's okay to be grateful I still have a job AND worried that because of that job I will bring home a virus that could kill my family. It's okay to love your people AND love yourself more even though it feels selfish. And all those other dualities and discomforts of life that we wish away but are actually an integral part of existence.

I think it's okay to gather up your palm fronds of hope and fear and wave them around the best you can and hope that it will be enough. I'm going to give myself permission to go to the mythical land of hallelujah whenever I feel it bubble up inside me. I'll do my own internal hosanna shout whenever I feel it. I'll shout hallelujah every time I wake up and I'm in my body and I'm feeling all my feelings and it's a victory over past trauma. I'll hug my kids and enjoy my friends and paint and laugh, cry when I need to, and hope for guidance on house buying and other concerns. And it will have to be enough.

I'm pretty sure Christ will make it enough. I don't know what that enough looks like, but I'm open to finding out.

Happy Palm Sunday, 2020. HOSANNA AND HALLELUJAH.

Uncomfortable Truths

Sun, 16 Jan 2022 16:56:40 +0100

We cannot change what we do not acknowledge. I am by no means an expert on race or history. I am just someone who didn’t know what I didn’t know until I needed to know it. Because it is my honor to be the mother of children of a different race than mine, placed into my hands by their first-mothers and through our open adoption arrangement, it is my privilege to have my eyes are opened on a daily basis. When I share things about race, it’s not out of a desire to be performative, to shame anyone for not understanding something, or to put myself out as some kind of leader. It’s just part of my lived experience that I believe may be helpful to people I care about.

One thing I hear regularly is “Utah is not a racist place. The (LDS) church is not racist.” Even if you believe that is true, ignoring the past or trying to rewrite it to fit the current narrative is not healing or helpful. Healing only comes from truth. Here are some truths.

-Mormon pioneers brought black slaves with them to Utah. Mormon pioneers sometimes gave slaves or their labor as part of their tithing to the church.

-Brigham Young said, “Shall I tell you the law of God in regard to the African race? If the white man who belongs to the chosen seed mixes his blood with the seed of Cain, the penalty, under the law of God, is death on the spot. This will always be so.” Journal of Discourses, Vol. 10, page 110.

-Slavery was made officially legal in Utah in 1852 and was not repealed until an act of Congress in 1862.

-Washington County was begun as the “Cotton Mission”. Many of the people sent here by the LDS Church to colonize this area were from the south. They brought with them their love for the area they had left, and laid it over this land in a strangely sanitized way that somehow glorified the south without acknowledging the harm that was and is unable to be untwined from the enslavement of an entire race of people. Many people in Southern Utah cannot and do not understand how their beloved “Dixie” is an identity that can and should be compassionately put to rest, as it no longer serves the growing diversity of the area. I grew up singing the songs of Dixie. I attended the local college when it still held mock slave auctions as a fundraiser. I was there when the college paid for a very large and expensive bronze of a “rebel” soldier holding the Confederate flag. This is highly entrenched in my psyche and has been very uncomfortable to see, acknowledge, and let go of.

-Utah enacted anti-miscegenation laws (interracial marriage is not legal) in 1888 and was the second to last state to repeal those laws in 1963.

-Into the late 50’s and early 60’s, even noted African American like Ella Fitzgerald were not allowed to eat at the restaurant in the Hotel Utah and were made to use the freight elevators.

-Members of the LDS Church who were POC were not allowed the blessings of the temple and priesthood that were key tenants of their faith until 1978. I was 5 years old that year.

-Depending on your age, either your parents or grandparents were alive during the civil rights struggles and they were either okay with people screaming death threats at 6 year old Ruby Bridges for trying to go to school, or they were not.

-When the federal government created MLK Day in 1986, Utah only adopted it under the name “Human Rights Day”. It was not formally recognized as a holiday to honor Dr. King until 2000. I clearly remember my school teacher (I was in high school) telling our class that we had to celebrate this holiday, but we didn’t need to make it “all about the blacks, it could be about being good to all humans”, accompanied by much eye rolling and shaking of the head.

These teachings, histories, and attitudes colored my upbringing consciously and unconsciously. And if you grew up in Utah or Mormon, and are my age or older, especially if you’re white, when you look back, you will certainly see what I’m talking about if you want to see it.

So these truths must be acknowledged, mourned, disavowed, called out. This is how you cleanse a wound. Not by ignoring it, or pretending it didn’t really happen that way, but by cleaning out the gunk, reapplying healing balms, tenderly bandaging, protecting and keeping clean as the healing begins, learning from whatever caused the wound, taking proactive steps so that it will not happen again, especially if you and/or the system you came from was the one that caused the wounding.

It's Not Just About The Lump

Sun, 26 Dec 2021 16:40:43 +0100

I wasn't planning on publicly sharing this, but after watching a variety of different types of posts on social media yesterday (which was International Women's Day for whatever that means and whoever made that up and whatever that's supposed to fix) I decided to go ahead and share this experience I just walked through. I think it encapsulates a lot about what it's like to be a woman and I don't share it to get sympathy or attention, but because I feel like I can and most women that go through these types of things don't talk about it, so I hope it can teach somebody something. Also, I'm not sharing certain parts of it to hurt anybody or to be vindictive, but simply because it's part of my truth and part of my story.

Wednesday, last week. My phone rings. "The doctor would like you to come back in for a follow-up..." and then my brain just shuts down.
You see,
It's not just about the lump.
It's about all the stuff that comes with it.

To begin, please understand that women's health care to me historically has meant lack of control or consent, great trauma, and abandonment. My first husband left me at the hospital during a medical procedure so he could go have a tryst with his newest lover, a man he was supposed to be fellowshipping back into our church. I also had three difficult pregnancies. The first, a fall and the near premature birth of my first son, the second, loss of twins in the first trimester, and the third, a traumatic birth of my second son in which I almost died and then had to have a hysterectomy to save my life. All of these events were made worse by a husband who I felt was emotionally unavailable during crisis. I'd find out why later.

So.......2012 was a really hard year.
My mom got breast cancer and had to have a mastectomy, began radiation and chemotherapy, my then father-in-law got thyroid cancer and died within 2 weeks of being diagnosed, my mom's sister was also diagnosed with breast cancer and underwent a mastectomy, an aunt and uncle on my then husband's side of the family died, and I was diagnosed with a degenerative eye disease.

As I moved into 2013, all kinds of weird things were happening in my marriage.It was empty and disconnected and I didn't know why.
I was slipping into a depression. The only thing that kept me going was teaching in my art studio and painting.
The last few sexual encounters I had had with my then husband were upsetting. I stopped having sex with him in the late summer.
And became increasingly numb.
We got Netflix and I utilized it heavily 
We were going on now 4 years without health insurance of any kind. With 4 small and active boys, this was a constant stresser.

It was in this environment that I found a lump in my left breast.

I didn't tell anybody. I was...... glad. 
I was going to keep it a secret and just let myself die of breast cancer and then everybody could be happy and move on with their lives. It was the solution to all my problems.
After 2 months my survival instincts kicked in, and I jumped online and found that Utah had a cancer program that covered uninsured women.

I went in and had a mammogram done, which led to an ultrasound and a biopsy and eventually to the removal of the lump, which was non-cancerous. I really didn't want my then husband involved in any of this, but I continued to invite him to the appointments in the hope that he would show up emotionally for me. He had not seen my body in about 6 months, but there I was laying on this biopsy table, freezing, with my breast exposed while him and this young hot shot doctor spent the entire appointment talking about cars and hiking. For me, it was utterly dehumanizing.

 I was very much out of my body for most of this experience. I had not yet learned how to trust myself, how to be in my body again, how to ground myself during trauma, or even that I was worth doing those things for at all. 

I had not been back for a breast exam or mammogram since that experience. It took a lot, I mean a lot for me to show up to this appointment a few weeks ago. So you see, I knew the call might not mean the worst, but when I got that call, it wasn't just about the lump. It was about all this other stuff.

And new stuff, like I'm a single mom now and I work full time and surgery is scary, expensive, and painful. And cancer is scary, and my mom and two of her sisters that have had breast cancer now. And, I want a date and find love again, and I kind of feel like I need my boobs, you know? 

And other things like the often dehumanizing or over sexualizing of women even in their healthcare experiences. I find it absolutely mind boggling that more than half the population of the world is women and yet policies and medical procedures come out of a patriarchal society which looks upon women's concerns as something that is a bother or uncomfortable. 

I find it absolutely insane that women feel uncomfortable talking about their breasts or their periods, or pregnancy and birth. It absolutely blows my mind that women on a regular basis feel like they must mutilate their bodies on purpose through plastic surgery so that they can look like some kind of porn-fueled ideal so they're boyfriend or husband won't be grossed out because their labia is the "wrong shape" or they have too much body hair, or their boobs are too small or changed because they nursed their child, or their stomach got mushy and scarred after their Cesarean! 

So it's not simple. It's never just a medical procedure for a woman. Because every woman has "the stuff that comes with it" whether it be past history, religious beliefs, cultural baggage or generational trauma.

 For me personally, I got so much healing from this thing which started out full of fear and ended up being reparative. 

I'm so grateful that the universe provides me opportunities to have corrective experiences. Because this time around, I was able to voice my needs. I didn't feel like there was lack of consent. My doctors and technicians were extremely sensitive and timely in their diagnostic procedures, I knew tools to be able to reset my nervous system, and I had a strong support system to reach out to that was full of safe and wonderful warrior women who could hold space for me, along with a great therapist who helped bring this previously banished and voiceless part of myself into safety and integration and I feel GOOD. 
And everything is fine! The masses were cysts. And cysts are safe.

Every day should be International Women's Day until every woman is able to have corrective experiences to fix all the wrongs that have been done to their bodies, spirits, and minds. And then until no more corrective experiences are needed!
Written March 2020

Paintings from the show...In the Eye of the Beholder

Tue, 14 Apr 2020 02:14:49 +0100

In the Eye of the Beholder, 2012

Oil and gold leaf on panel

14” x 18”

I did this piece when I first found out I had the degenerative eye disease called keratoconus.

I was full of fear.

Losing my eyesight had always been one of my great terrors, and now it looked like having serious vision challenges was going to be a part of my life forever.

This painting began a series of works that turned into my first solo show, Beauty in the Eye, which was all about vision loss and eye diseases.

My family and community, and even total strangers, rallied around me in extraordinary ways during that time and donated enough money that I was able to go get the then considered experimental treatment epi-on cross-linking done and an intac implanted into my left eye.

I look back on my life at this time as a time of great miracles and filling of my soul with a solid reality of the goodness of people and love that is available in the world.

I would need to draw on this well deeply in the next few years of my life.

Paintings from the show....What He Threw Away

Tue, 17 Nov 2020 23:14:18 +0100

That's me as a first time bride in 1995.

And that's me, divorced, in 1997 and standing next to the only time I ever showed this painting of my first ex-husband, Doug, until showing it in my solo show, Couch to Canvas.

I called it What He Threw Away.

It was an assignment in class in the style of another artist (Klimt).

I remember when I did this painting I was only a month or so out from my separation from Doug and in the middle of big pain and complete confusion. I now see how this work, even the title, reflects the ways in which I was still romanticizing what I thought was our broken love and what I thought I had experienced. I had no language or context at that time to really understand what it meant to be in an abusive relationship with a dangerous person who saw me as an object to meet his needs and not as a person. Nothing in my fairly sheltered LDS upbringing in Southern Utah could have prepared me for what I went through in my relationship with this man.

Although intelligent, creative, talented, and amazing, he was also very disturbed and broken and covering up a very deep secret; he was a gay man from a popular and well thought of LDS family who was desperately trying to keep that perfect Mormon mask on. To facilitate the covering up of that secret, he manipulated and used me in the most intimately damaging ways possible. I now understand and even have compassion for why he did what he did, though that knowledge does not excuse his behavior. Behavior that left me completely broken, almost destroyed my entire concept of self, and left me vulnerable to future abusive relationships. I was lucky to walk away with my health and my life as intact as it was, though I was changed as a person forever.

The wounds from this relationship and it's domino effect on my life are still in the process of being healed.

What He Threw Away, 1997

Oil on panel

15” x 30”

Paintings from the show....Kitty Hawk

Tue, 17 Nov 2020 23:15:10 +0100

Kitty Hawk (assemblage version), 2018

Watercolor and paper

24” x 30”

This is a portrait of Nora. Nora is a spitfire of a girl whose personality reached out to me so strongly, that I could feel it over the internet. She stands boldly in her body and I felt it was appropriate to juxtapose her in front of the hill at Kitty Hawk, which holds deep personal meaning for me as a place of bravery and discovery.

It is also an homage to all the brave girls and women who must learn to fly in the context of a very patriarchal world that often holds them down. Surrounding her are paper airplanes made by my boys from church programs, divorce papers, and journal entries. These are things that have often weighed me down but I have re-purposed to use to fly.

Prints of this piece are available on my Fine Art America print site.

Paintings from the show....Finding Out I'm the Sister-of-Jared (or Tight Like a Dish)

Tue, 14 Apr 2020 01:55:30 +0100

Finding Out I’m the Sister-of-Jared (or Tight Like a Dish), 2019

Oil on panel

18” x 36”

Here what it's about.

One day I was lamenting to my therapist about how I didn’t think I could take anymore, go any further; how I was feeling abandoned and broken beyond fixing.

Right in the middle of processing these feelings I had a very forceful memory come to mind of a talk I had listened to months earlier. The talk was When My Prayers Feel Unanswered, which people commonly refer to as the “fourth watch God talk” given by Michael Wilcox in 2005 at a BYU Education Week.

Along with the clear memory of this talk, came the image to my mind of myself standing on a beach in a storm, the wind whipping my hair and dress around as I searched for pebbles, my eyes looking up to heaven, then at the crashing waves, then down at the beach over and over again and a voice clearly saying “You are tight like a dish”, which would normally make me laugh because I find the phrase amusing but at this particular time made me start sobbing like a baby.

In this talk Wilcox speaks on how we need to remember that God is a fourth watch God. This means he comes in the darkest, most exhausting part of the night. BUT if he doesn’t seem to be coming and we feel that we have passed the fourth watch there is something we need to know about ourselves. We need to know that we are probably tight like a dish.

If you’ve ever read the story of the Brother of Jared in the Book of Mormon you’ll know what this references. They’re supposed to cross this ocean. It’s going to be bad. They can’t have windows, they can’t have fire. So he gets God to touch some stones so they’ll glow and provide light for the journey.

This journey is going to be so awful, how will they be okay, even with the miraculous light source?

They’ll be okay because the boats they will be in are built so strong, so well that they are described as being “tight like a dish”. This is, in fact, stated no less than six times.

I’ve never felt like I was tight like dish. Sometimes I’ve felt strong, but I’ve always felt broken. Definitely not like a vessel that could carry people across a storm ridden sea beyond the fourth watch and into the darkness. But God was telling me I was. I cried because I didn’t want to believe it because it means things are going to keep being hard and because I had to believe it because of the way it rang the bell of truth in my soul in such a way that I had no choice but to believe Him.

So now, during those times when my feelings of brokenness come welling up, I remember that if I feel like it’s past the fourth watch, that’s because it is, but God trusts me to keep going, because I’m tight like a dish.

Heaven help me. Tight like a dish.

Paintings from the show....The Fire Inside Her Burned Brighter

Tue, 17 Nov 2020 23:16:07 +0100

The Fire Inside Her Burned Brighter, 1998

Oil on panel

12” x 20”

This is the oldest piece I had hanging in my solo show Couch to Canvas.

In 1997 I had returned to SUU after separating from my first husband to finish my degree in Illustration. Waiting for me there was a new art teacher, Brian Hoover, who was a visual storyteller, and the medium of oil paint which I had not previously explored much. I had originally come to school with the intent of being a teacher, children's book illustrator and author, but I never really had a story to tell. Or at least, I didn't think I did.

But now the story that needed telling was my life and it was most definitely not like the fairy tales I had been spoon fed on throughout my childhood. In this painting I was trying to show how, although I had been changed by going through a horrible marriage and divorce, I still had a hope inside of me, a fire that had not burned out, and that I was looking for healing and peace.

I honestly didn't know that that's what I was doing at the time. I was just doing it intuitively, because I had no language to talk about the things that happened to me or the hopes that still lived inside of me.

Very grateful for the gift of art that helped to keep me sane enough to keep going until I got to help that I needed to make sense of the things that happened in my life.

Paintings from the show...The Process of Laying It Down and Picking It Back Up

Tue, 17 Nov 2020 23:16:59 +0100

The Process of Laying It Down and Picking It Back Up (assemblage version), 2019

Oil on panel

24” x 30”

This piece started out as a series of small watercolor studies that I did to try and reclaim and heal something.

I knew I was going to do the piece, but I wasn't sure if I would show it to anybody.

One of the scariest (and coolest) things about art is that you can't control what happens in the mind of the viewer after you put it out there. I had a very personal and specific meaning for this work, but was concerned that my intent would be misread by a viewer who was wanting it to be salacious or to use it for their own gratification.

But this is not a new fear nor is it uncommon.

This is the lifelong plight of most women. Does my body belong to me or does it exist for your pleasure? It doesn't seem to matter if the woman is wearing a bikini or a burka, some people are going to objectify that woman. The fear of this feeling, this energy of being dehumanized, can be pretty intense and limiting, like a prison.

For me, there came a point where I had to realize that what was going on in someone else's head had nothing to do with me.

Knowing I'd gotten what I needed from the piece, I showed it to my sons. I figured if they were okay with others seeing it, then I was okay with it. Not in that my body belongs to my sons, but that I am their mother and my actions impact their lives and I care about their feelings.

So I went ahead and decided to make a larger painting of the last in the series and then show them all together as an installation piece in which I explain what my motivation was.

Post Couch to Canvas Show Musings

Tue, 14 Apr 2020 01:29:36 +0100

The show is not what I originally had planned. I signed up to do it early last fall when I was feeling really good about my life, like I had the energy to execute my vision. I had solid recent works I was proud of and ideas for five new pieces in my head.

Then things got super messy again and I was in survival mode from the end of 2018 through the summer of 2019.

You know what happens when you're in survival mode? Not much. So there I was, two months out and only two of the new works done beyond sketch stage. After much panicked contemplation, I came to the realization that I would need to show older works to fill the show. When I finally accepted this idea, the show clicked into place. It could still be what I had envisioned, but it would need to be a journey story instead of a destination celebration (if there really is such a thing).

I knew it was what needed to happen, but getting the perfectionist control freak in me to be okay with that was a huge struggle. It was crazy scary.

I've never considered myself a courageous person because I know what's going on inside my head and body while I'm doing things that might appear brave to others. I'm a hot mess. But after reading this quote from Brene Brown I have to say that allowing this show to happen the way it needed to was a courageous thing to do, because this show was my whole naked heart hanging in a gallery.

I'm full of gratitude for the soul healing conversations and experiences sharing my art and story have brought. I'm so grateful if this has helped even one person feel less alone, less crazy, less like a freak.

Thank you so much to all who participated, to those who purchased pieces, or helped with the show in any way. My heart is full.