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| Cutter, an acrylic on canvas painting, 2015 |
Cutting never seemed like
something I had ever done in the past.
When I started cutting my wrists recently, I realized that I had done it
before, but not the severity that was coming now. My
mind tends to forget memories that are not pleasant. This amnesia works until
something wakes me.
Cutters may self-harm for
a variety of reasons. Mine started from a real attempt at suicide. The pain of
being immobile and mental agony was so strong I could feel it as if it were one
large physical wound. I could never point to where the pain was emanating. I did
not have headaches, or throbbing pain. What I had was an overwhelming weariness
of going around and around bipolar poles of up and then down.
If life was going to be a
perpetual shift of constant moods from suicidal depression to over the top
optimism, there was no value in continuing when you are unable to do anything
but go up and down and up and down. I was worn out, and it was not from age. I
know what growing older feels like. This was something very different.
They say you don’t recall
pain. You may not be able to recall it like some memories, but intellectually I
had a very solid picture in my mind of what I felt. I knew where my mind was. I
was slipping into a reality of my own invention.
This was something like a semi delusional
break from reality. It was a break where I was going to a place that is
incorporeal. This was the place where beautiful things are made, then damaged.
This is not the lofty heights of mania that conjure magnificent dreams. This
place is located in the hostile interior of the mind and it is dark,
theatrical, intense, poetic, but far too dangerous a place to stay. When I was
thrown into that world, cutting was a way out of the tentacles of sorrows.
The first cut hurts. They
all do, but I continued because I was expressing myself. I was unleashing the
pressure that was holding such a vice like grip on everything I was doing. All
I was capable of doing was feeling pain. The respite provided by mania was
absent. Cutting jolted me back to the real world. I felt things again. The
mental pain was replaced by a desire to keep cutting. I felt alive.
I tried to stop cutting,
but I couldn't. I wanted to see if I could endure the pain. I wanted to draw
blood. I knew this was madness, but I could not stop. I was a junky promising
to go to rehab knowing full well that the monkey on my back is always in need
of a meal that I would always provide. I felt like I was hooked on my own
cutting.
I felt pain, but I just
closed my eyes. When I opened them my marks were like battle scars. They were linear
pieces of art dug into my skin. They were my own personal statement. In a crude
way they looked beautiful. That was what I was thinking of at the time. A row
of horizontal lines running from my wrists up my arm. Each one was deeper. Each
mark let just a little more air out of the pressure cooker that was my mind. As I progressed I do so eyes open.
My mind was two edged
sword. I had a sense that this was crazy. I had another sense that told me this
was what I needed to do. It felt good and bad. I was sliding down, but I
thought this was not so bad. People do more damage than this. I felt proud. I
had created my own performance piece of art for myself.
When I stopped, I felt
better. I felt that I was really painting in my own blood.
“Cutter” was my expression
of the cutting experience. It was not long after I had my first cutting episode
that I thought this experience would make a compelling painting.
Faster than any work I
have ever created before, Cutter arrived like Athena out of Zeus’ head. The
details needed defining, but I had a total mental picture in my mind of what I
wanted to say about cutting. There were no long studies. There were no
confused areas. Cutting emerged in my mind complete. The only way that image
was ever going to leave me is if I painted it.
There was an almost
religious ritual like quality with this painting. I was delving into the very
depths of an experience, and it was revealing. Just as I go through the trials
and tribulations of creating, I do not remember the feeling of pain in making
this piece. I know there were rough
areas, but I do not remember them.
I remember what I felt when I cut
intellectually, even the relief it provided.
But I do not recall the pain that I know was there when I made this
piece.
Like “Horse,” “Cutter” was
created entirely while I was on medications. I was also using the same
influences as “Horse.” They are closely related. They both use animals to represent the mind. They both are
inspired by the same sources.
Central to the work is the
expressionistic eagle. It represents a mind in chaos. It also represents a mind
that is decisive, sharp and desperately hanging on with talons grasping the
essence of sanity itself. There is fear, anxiety, pride and flight. The spread
wings are lighter on one side and darker on the other. The wings and background are divided in half. One side is bright, the up side of bipolar. The other side is dark, the depressed side of bipolar.
The arms on either side of
the eagle represent mania and depression. Stylized to a great degree, the lines
on the arm on the right show straight horizontal red lines. Those strokes represent the cuts.
Unintentionally, I had
created the colors of the old German flag of red, black and white. It is
something subtle, but I noticed it not long after I created it. My father was an artist and this was an
unconscious reference to him and German art. For years I wanted to create work that specifically addressed my father. Due to circumstances beyond his control, he could not create art. In the back of my mind I believe part of my drive is to create is to continue what he could not.
According to what was passed down to me, my Great Grandfather had substantial talent. It was told to me that he actually was accepted at an art institute of some sort to become an artist. He felt there was no use in going, which was tragic. But, he was considered talented enough to create fine art for the church in his community. That was a fact given to me much later in life. The vast majority of my family were musicians, on both sides.
Intense emotion is, at
least for me, a challenge. This time, the eagle became so much darker. The eyes
were not the eyes of a bird. They were the eyes of a man.
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