this painting is very difficult for me to explain because i create art with the intention of never revealing my purpose. i believe that art is more about the viewer’s experience and feelings evoked from a powerful image than what the artist intended, therefore i never reveal what i was feeling when i create something. art is a personal, cathartic experience, for the creator and the viewer.
almost six months ago a classmate of mine died. i don’t really remember anything from that day except thinking that euphemisms for death were the stupidest fucking thing in the world. i remember not feeling any different than i had the day before, my body felt exactly the same but as the day went on my head felt like there was a brick in it. i remember the night before her funeral, sitting on the couch, watching television with all of my friends and trying to forget about everything that was going to happen next. i can recall the feeling of walking out of the cathedral with my 149 classmates, the moment we all started sobbing again in the cool morning air. i remember seeing friends of mine from a nearby school at the funeral, wearing pink and orange shirts (my class colors) underneath their uniforms and bursting into tears of graciousness. i remember taking my dad’s car and driving to the top of my neighborhood in the middle of a rainstorm. i cried for at least an hour, listening to the same song on repeat as it finally sunk in. the first time i heard the song unwritten (it was played at her funeral) on the radio at work, i ran to the bathroom and tried not to cry because i still had six hours left in my shift. for a while, i felt like i was the only person who was still sad, even though i knew that i wasn’t.
we are closer now. knowing how precious the bond of sisterhood and love we share has united us, and not a single day of our senior year of high school has been taken for granted. we have punctuated this final year of high school with unbelievable support at sports games and school musicals and we have had dance parties in the cafeteria. we’ve become best friends with each other and lived life to the fullest.
thinking about life as a horizontal line, it’s marked with darkness on each end. we are born and we die into darkness. losing someone you love, it fragments life into a million pieces. darkness and light and darkness and light forever. no longer bookends, darkness becomes commas and periods and question marks, symbolic of finality and continuation and wonder. sadness overcomes our lives inevitably but we cannot let it end us. bursts of happiness are given, but we must know that nothing is forever. life is marked by darkness, but filled with joy.
