My Paintings and the Insight They Might Provide

As I brushed my teeth this morning, I took time to actually look at the paintings in my bathroom and then the ones in my living room as I followed this train of thought.  There was a time in my life where I got into acrylic painting.  With each move, I disposed of more and more of the paintings I had done, especially the larger ones and most recently the ones my ex-husband and I did as a pair.  But I held onto nine that I still really liked.

There are four of them though that really caught my attention this morning.  They are different from the rest in that they are a bit dark.  The remaining five are much more positive with things like birch trees, whimsical flowers, black-eyed Susans reaching for silver clouds, etc.  

My focus had always been the beautiful monarch while I ignored the spiraling hole ready to suck the monarch into the unknown.

Chaos inside the home, looking out at the peace outdoors

Two sparrows in a hurricane (there is a country song about this) -
the reds and yellows are such angry colors

The opposites of sky and sea/day and night and getting caught in the wrong one.  
Nothing is quite as it seems.

My mind is trying to place them in a context.  I didn't take any photos of them in real time and so I believe they must have been before I got my first smartphone in early 2016 (yes, I was very late to the smart phone scene).  I don't think I got into painting until sometime after we bought our house in 2010.  So they were likely painted between late 2010 and 2015.  The problems we had as a couple that lead us to couple's counseling were later (2017 and 2018).

I don't actually remember any problems during that time period.  I was learning to garden and getting distracted by the butterflies that my flowers would attract.  We were setting up bird feeders in our backyard and had a list on the fridge of all the species we had seen and in what months.  I would hang laundry out on the lines even in the winter and the chickadees would keep my company.

We were starting to travel a bit more on our own.  I was tracking all the state parks we visited as we tried to get to them all.  I was singing in the Brookfield Civic Chorus and he had gotten into Tae Kwon Do.  He was finally in a career he enjoyed.  I was still finding my way as this was the early years of my transition to the legal field.  These were the years I drove some fun VWs, probably my favorite cars, first Lolita the diesel Jetta, then Snowflake and Cielo, two Beetle Convertibles - all stick shifts.

My chronic pain got to its worst in the middle of this time period (late 2012 to probably at least 2015).  I think it was in 2012, I started working with a really good therapist (so the beginning of some real growth for me), first to overcome my phobia of needles so it was likely later that year, I started with the WISH clinic to try and treat my pelvic pain.  Sadly, the treatments I went through with them spread the pain to my hips and lower back so what once was just pain during intercourse became a daily, constant, excruciating pain.  

Is the darkness in these paintings a reflection of the physical pain I was experiencing?  And if that physical pain was a response to (perhaps subconscious) stress from my relationship (which I think is quite possible), could the darkness in these paintings be a reflection of something deeper?  

And isn't it interesting that when I think back on those years, I first am reminded of all the joy before the pain even comes to my mind?  Just think of the way this post progressed from "I don't actually remember any problems during that time period" to a description several paragraphs later of the "excruciating pain" I was experiencing in those years.

I don't know that I got any answers from this journey this morning reflecting on these paintings but it was a bit fascinating to contemplate.  I don't want to end this post though without a reminder of the joy I found during this same period, so here are the other five paintings I did.

This one was probably a bit later because I know it was painted at the Milwaukee Art Museum during their spring Art in Bloom event - so this was probably April of 2017 or April of 2018.