Holding On

So, I was struggling the past couple of days while working on my artwork.  Not because of a lack of ideas, but because of all the emotions that came out of it.  I swear I just broke down crying because of all of the memories and feelings I try to suppress in regards to my grandmother.  It is difficult exploring the subject of her while trying to stay detached emotionally.  But, I've realized that is just not possible, and maybe that is for the best.  I need to address these feelings.

After she passed away I went back into her house twice.  I couldn't bring myself to go back in the house after that.  It was just too hard.  The harder thing was that my cousin lives in the house now and when she has parties I make up excuses so that I dont have to go back in the house.  It just brings up too many memories.  Its strange I want to remember and fight to hold on to the memory of her.  Yet, sometimes its like system overload and it is just too much to handle.  The only way to function normally is to just close the door and turn the emotions off.  I decided to go to google maps and look up my grandmas house.  They let you look up a street view on it and it just opened the doors, the windows, and every nook and cranny that I had closed.  All of these memories came back and I just started to cry.  Memories of me baking with her and watching the olympics with her, spending the night, feeding her when she was sick, seeing her in the hospital, mowing her lawn and so on.  I realized that I need to explore her house more.   Not in real life, but in my artwork.  So, I hope to have some stuff on that soon.

But, in the mean time I decided to explore the overlay drawings of my grandma, my mom, and me in a different way.  This was also why I was having a ton of emotions pouring out of me.  I am doing watercolor paintings of my grandmother.  I chose one picture and taped off a specific section of it.  The first one I could look at the photo, but the second one I could only glance at the first painting before I began on the second one.  I did this a few more times, but then I decided that I should limit myself by time on these.  So, I played with a couple different times before I ended on 2 minutes each.  After the time is up I cant play with the painting anymore.  Each time the picture looks vaguely familiar but always  different.  I feel like I am getting more of an idea of the loss of memory over time or the struggle to hold on to a memory over time in doing it this way.

Okay, so here is the photo I am using of my grandma.  This photo always bothered because she seems upset or like she is talking about something serious.  I have always wondered what she was thinking about.

This is the first painting of her.  I decided to use watercolor so that it isn't exact or completely realistic.  I feel that it gives a haze to it.

This is the second one based on a glance at first one.

I feel like you can start to see the change in this one.  The proportions, detail, and vividness are off.

This is the last painting before I started timing myself.

Here are some of the timed ones.

  I feel much better about the timed ones.  There is much more of a sense of urgency as well as a complete lack of information depending on the painting.  I am interested to see how they will continue to form and change as I go forward.  Okay.  Enough babbling for tonight.  I will post more soon!

Rachel