DEEP IMPACT

There is no stopping the impact of a life’s situation on an Artist and the type of artwork that is being created because of this action and reaction. Even now decades later, I was reminded of this cause and effect that happened to me. I had stopped painting because of my health problems with balance, letting my hands move over my work, touching the failures and successes of my design, allowing me to continue to create artwork. Thus, my conceptual sculpture series “Fish Reality” permitted me to move through my feelings of Grace “Liz” Payne murder and the pondering of my own life. Then after 9 years of limbo of no prosecution, Mr. Rogers is arrested, and now the trial. I sat in the first row allowed, so I could do my stare down at him every time he entered or left court. He wasn’t a stranger to Liz or me; we helped her move into the apartment he would come back too and end her life in. Crimes can have a “power” that can consume people long after the criminal has done his terrible activities, unless…. the person takes or fights to get that “power” back.  He avoided looking at me, time after time until a Friday lunch break, the gallery of people was down to my pregnant friend standing next to me in support. She had earlier explained to me how she wouldn’t be able to look at him, I understood. I was further down that path of healing because I had been able express my feelings through my artwork, the “Fish” series.  Well, the moment had come for our eye to eye stare down, no words to speak and express my feelings to him. I had to convey everything through my visual look on my face, in my eyes….. and he looked away and never looked at me again during his trial and conviction in court. In the end, I had my “power” back, but I walked out of that court a different person and Artist. I saw the world as a black and white one, with shadows everywhere. I went home and nothing but these drawings with no color just poured out of me, one after another. I was now into my next series before I could dust the charcoal from my face, through my tears. The “Losing Grace” series did produced some of my best work, won awards, hung in the best Art Museums in the area, each drawing drenched deeply in my private pain of grief.  For me it was a strange mix of praise, because I shared the tragedy through my artwork and my personal release of feelings that can bottleneck inside me if outlets or series, aren’t found to set them free in.