A dog

A monster

Hi!

Thank you for reading my second installment! 

I wrote this a few weeks ago but then my eyes went akimbo and I couldn’t muster the courage to send it off.

One of the purposes of Eyes Akimbo is that I want to shed the weight of some old baggage.  When I paint or draw, I am constantly telling myself stories from my life.  It’s an act that I find extremely therapeutic, but I know that putting words onto those stories can also be helpful.  I do like to tell stories, I just haven’t ventured much further than telling stories to friends, including a writing group, or confidentially on my computer.  I became a Pilates instructor a few years ago in part to combat my fear (cough, cough, insecurity) of speaking in front of a group of people.  (And let’s be honest, I was hoping to get some laughs.) 

I will say that maybe a part of me not sending this out earlier is because just writing it felt like enough.  But I want to share because I know I am not alone in my feelings.

Before we get into that, here is a painting I did last month.  It’s called a painting for a fifteen year old girl who hates the world.

You may recall from my last newsletter that I appreciated Patty Schemel for saying that she wanted to make music for 15 year old girls who hate the world. I thought I would follow suit by making a painting for me at that age. I wonder if I would have hated the painting.

  I’m not entirely sold on the shade of pink in the background but it is quite reminiscent of my childhood bedroom.  When I was around 15 I briefly saw a therapist named Tom.  He asked me to describe my room.  When I, in my finest grumpy scowl, told him pink, he asked, “Are you daddy’s little girl?” Gross. “No, we painted it when I was 8.” 

(Quick aside-I had a drawing professor at SAIC who approached a classmate in chunky black glasses to tell her she looked like Enid from the Daniel Clowse comic book/movie Ghost World.  She then said that Enid was based on her daughter and Daniel Clowse was her son-in-law. Later in the semester, while trying to figure out my style, I made a comic type self-portrait. I put the words “Daddy’s little girl” on the shirt trying to bridge the disconnect I felt from such a statement.  That professor then ripped me to shreds, mocking the words on the shirt and the comic style.  I was like, “Weren’t you bragging about Daniel Clowes the first day of class!?” When I later saw Clowse’s Art School Confidential I wondered which character was based on his mother-in-law.)

I did not intend for this painting to be have so many bubbles/spheres, but when I look at it I get that teenage feeling of nebulousness.  Nothing back then was solid, except for my disconnect. 

Here’s a story I wish to shed.

1988, fourth grade.

I drove with my mom to pick up my older brother from elementary school.  The sixth grade had gone on a field trip.  I sat in the way back of the station wagon watching the older kids through the window.  When my brother got in the car he said, “Jason just asked if that was my dog in the back or my sister.” 

(Dog was the number one insult to a girl back then.)

That memory popped into my head the other day after at least a decade long hiatus.  Though through my teens and twenties it was on repeat as a truth about myself. I often could not make art because of it. I could not allow myself to experience creativity because I was too ugly.  I believed that there was a freedom to create given to the beauties and that I would never be allowed such a luxury.  

Not only could I not make art, but I would also never be that ethereal muse we were all taught to worship.  The whole point of women in art history, basically.  I fit in nowhere.

On the occasion that I was happily drawing, I’d take a bathroom break, glance into the mirror and go numb.  What was I even thinking letting myself draw?  Too ugly. Too, too ugly.  I’d go lay in my bed, head swirling with self-abasement, resisting the urge of my teenage self to slice some reality into my body with razor blades, instead I’d pull out my hair. 

Creating only a pile of hair on the floor to be shamefully scooped up and thrown in the trash.  

detail of a drawing

Here are two stories from the past month:

1.  At the end of my open studio, past the time that I was to lock the door and throw everyone out, a man perused my paintings and drawings. 

 “Is this for sale?” he asked.  

He was pointing at a tattoo flash sheet I had made for my friend.  I made 5 pages of simple line drawings, five across, four down.  Each drawing vaguely inspiring the next. Little creatures with multiple heads and faces.  Ultimately my friend wasn’t interested, I think I willfully overlooked the fact that she requested flowers not faces, but all was not lost as one of the little drawings became the logo on my business card and here on Substack. 

I told the man, “Yes, it’s for sale.”  

“How much do you want for it?”  

I had not yet sold anything because that was not my intention with my open studio.  I really just wanted to see what it felt like to have people wander through. Could I deal with their indifference or interest!?   People had asked if things were for sale and I gave a flat “sure” like a real nightmare of salesman’s daughter. 

I did some mental math, how much drawing was actually on the paper, how long had it taken me to do, what kind of paper it was on.

“Uhh, $50?” I asked/told him. 

“Ok.”

Earlier in the day I had given myself the instruction that nothing was under $100 so  berating voices had just started doing throat exercises inside my head when he said, “I’m a psychiatrist at UT and want to hang it in my office.  I really like all of the different faces.”

The voices in my head went silent and I said, “That’s where I want my art to hang!”

That hole where that $50 I just “cheated” myself was filled in with the makings of my path towards helping others with their mental health.  

I’d often daydreamed about a therapist’s office where some tamped down soul was under the impression that everything was fine.  They stare off, away from eye contact with the therapist, head held high. They see one of my paintings or drawings. 

“Why does that one creature look so guilty?”  

Then with guilt on the brain they start spitballing some thoughts about it. The therapist goes into therapist mode and by the end of the hour some weight has been lifted.  

Sara Hannon a modern day Rorshach.

Before he Venmo-ed me, the psychiatrist asked, “So $50’s good?” 

I did more mental math- Is this experience greater or less than money?

“It’s good.” 

$50? Must we monetize!?

2. A week later I’m at the reception for the Contra/Common show in which I had two paintings.  The gallery invited the artists to talk about our work. It was, as far as I can recall, the first time I had gotten in front of my paintings to talk about them.  It was a new sensation having eyes on me in such a manner.  I got some laughs and people seemed interested, so I was fine with it. 

Afterwards, I was doing some hobnobbing with the other artists and their spouses.  A spouse said to me, “I’m a therapist and I wanted to tell you that your work reminds me of Parts work.”

“Internal family systems?” I asked.

“Yes!” she said.

Then I fessed up that I only really know about it because of therapist friends and in therapy friends.  I myself do not do it.  

“OH MY GOD! My goal is to have work in therapists offices it’s amazing that you see that in it!”  I told her the previous story and we agreed I need to charge more regardless of how much drawing is on the page and how long it took me!  

She is an eating disorder therapist.  I told her that I’m a Pilates instructor and that as an instructor my number one goal is to get people into their bodies, accepting of their bodies. (While secretly fearing that she was sizing me up and concluding that under my baggy dress I do not have “hot Pilates body.”) We discussed the detriment of societal expectations placed on our bodies, perceived or otherwise. Just some light convo at the art show.  

Fast forward ten minutes when my husband, Kris, requests that I pose in front of a painting for posterity.  

Game fucking over.  

I looked through the pictures I just awkwardly posed for and could not believe that I am a person who dares show her face in public.  

People have to look at me!?  Oh my god this dress is so stupid and my face, can you call that a face!? I mean, why would people wonder why my paintings are so monstrous, it’s because I am a monster! 

I held it together until we were in the car.  There we were in the anywhere USA parking lot of the Hill Country Galleria.  Kris was looking up where we could get vegan pizza in the area and I was in the passenger seat sliding down a mental slope into loose fat and asymmetrical eyebrows.  

“I just can’t believe that I am this ugly!  People have to look at me! How can people look at me! I am barely a human.  No! I am not even human!” 

I felt that old familiar numbness take over. I was suddenly so embarrassed that I had put my art on a wall and stood in front of it and talked out of this big toothed mouth.  

Had people even listened to me or were they spending the whole time feeling sorry for themselves for being in my grotesque presence?

Kris, not a stranger to my bouts of self-righteous self-loathing, told me I was wrong and that I must have body dysmorphia.  

In the past I would have been like, “It’s not dysmorphia, it’s true! Look at me! No don’t! You’ll hurt your eyes!”  but a few days earlier my Photos app reminded me of a picture Kris had taken of me. I was wearing the same dress as I wore that night to the opening.  It was a headshot and I was smiling. It was from a few years earlier, the week before my first ever show, Homesick for Tomorrow, at Mass Gallery.  I asked Kris to post about it on Instagram. Instead of posting a photo of my art, he posted that picture of me, followed by pictures of the art.  I was mortified and embarrassed.  No one will go see the art of that ugly lady! No one will even flip through the pictures cuz they’ll just want to scroll away. 

Kris fought me.  He thought I looked beautiful in the picture.  

NOOOOOOOOOOOOO I DO NOT!  

When that photo resurfaced my first thought was, ‘Huh, it’s really not that bad of a picture.’  

Here’s where my eyes went akimbo. If it was true that that one picture that caused me to freak out wasn’t so bad, is it possible that the pictures from tonight aren’t that bad?

Why was I ruining this night with tales of monsters when there weren’t any?  Everyone was very nice to me.  I received many compliments.  I thought about how sweet Kris came out of his comfort zone to accompany me, his wife, as I accomplished a “career win.” He just wanted to share a pizza but was instead sparring with a long active beast who rears her head when……I ……feel……vulnerable.  

“Oh, ok.” I conceded.   

We went to Jester King and as I ate my pizza I did some more mental math: the control I have over my present emotions are greater than, lesser than, or equal to the power I have over what I imagine people are thinking?

detail of a drawing

………………

Somethings I have been appreciating lately:

Learn about Parts work -a conversation between the founder of  PARTS therapy, Dr. Richard Schwartz and the founder of Somatic Experiencing, Dr.Peter Levine.  (My deep thought while watching them talk: We are all just grappling to understand our minds. The possibilities of who we are as humans is endless.)

You Still Believe in Me by The Beach Boys I want to cryyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy!

Our shop cat. My latest name for her is Bud E. Boy. I often ask her what she thinks the E stands for.  Could it be Enid!?

awwwww

My home-is-where-the-heart-is cat, Goma.

She loves BEDTIME