Painting Angels

Painting Angels

by | Jul 31, 2017 | Art Blog

The first angel was an accident. Or I could say it just arrived. I was in a dark place, and all I could do was turn to art. I had always put my life on paper, pulling the terrible out of me so I could breathe. I began a painting, Fallen 1, from one of my drawings of broken people/creatures and put mountains in the background. When people came by, they saw an angel: the unfinished mountains in the background had become wings that sprung from the its back.

 

 

I began to adapt the concept of the fallen angel in other paintings; the angel had been removed from heaven, but perhaps in my version, returning was a possibility.

Painting My Mother

Painting My Mother

by | Jul 19, 2017 | Art Blog

I drew my mother for the first time when I was in art school, and didn’t draw her again until she had her first, then second stroke, and became like a child to me. Nothing prepares you.

When my mother passed, I was lost. I did not know how to survive but I started to paint, madly, and write, always. I pulled the despair out of me and onto paper.

I painted my pain, then angels, and then my mother began to nudge me, telling me it was time to paint her. I looked for her in the wedding photos that were taken when she was just nineteen. I found her in the hours, days and weeks that I spent looking into her face, her eyes.

 

 

Beloved mother, you never leave my side. Your beautiful, gnarled, arthritic feet rest in my lap, and I am home. You lie in the shadows of me, keeping me from harm.

 

 

Photo of my mother, Zalakha, with my daughter, Natasha, in the summer of 2010, before the first stroke.