I Woke Up And Found Myself Here

A grand mal seizure left the artist lost between two worlds. Her memory lost between two places across to there and then to here

a painting three years coming to birth

Its entry into this world a watercolor January 2017 and its completion an oil painting January 2020

I didn’t remember when I stopped remembering overpowering seizures seized my brain. Each happening back into this world I gathered littered memories from all across the floor.

Lost between two worlds I reached for the language that was consistent between there and here and I tried to talk out loud in lines and colors in the language I understood. I reached for pencils and watercolors I hadn’t touched in many years because an illness had robbed me of brain and body and I scribbled in the language I understood. Pencil marks like lines of characters both have lines that join together, both have lines that convey a meaning, both have lines to help you understand, so I talked in lines it felt like coming from there to here.

The Artist

I woke up and found myself here

Watercolor on Paper
17" x 12"
January 2017

Her Sister Piece - Emerging from there to here

Watercolor on Paper
17" x 12"
January 2017

The first words I scribbled on paper

Graphite on Paper
17" x 12"
January 2017

I Was Unable To Remember

20 years of my life had disappeared forever

I woke to find my body unmovable in spasms my body in a tornado of pain those feelings weren’t different between there and here. Holding on to make myself steady questions begin to fall from my mouth and they still do, I did not know where I was, how was I in America? My memories were all in London where I was born! I came to America 20 years ago why can’t I remember? What is wrong with me?

I had just experienced a Grand Mal seizure lasting 45 minutes it had wiped away memories of twenty years. My memories were blown away discarded across a landscape unfamiliar.

I am sick with an unknown neurological disease that attacks me from all directions. 20 years my body in uncontrollable spasms, in uncontrollable pain and uncontrollable nocturnal seizures. In the previous year I had been in hospital and ICU over 16 times. I have a new neurologist.

Three Years Striving To Paint

I WOKE AND FOUND MYSELF HERE

From Hospitalized To The Journey Home

Over and Over and Over Again

SEIZED: A Map Of Drawings

2-Dimensional Drawings of a 3-Dimensional Brain

Road to completion

a road with many forks

January 2017 the journey to my studio may have began but the brutal seizures had not finished with me after the life-threatening Grand Mal seizure had brought me back here. The pencil that had returned to my hand in a series of days and moments with the series of seizures still electrifying intensive in my brain I created life drawings of my brain ‘2-Dimensional Drawings of a 3-Dimensional Brain’ and sketched out it’s electrifying pain, emotions and missing time.

Journeys to ICU’s, hospitalizations were now less frequent, nocturnal seizures remained intense early on in 2017 and the part of my neurological disease which seizes my body rigid and pain vast as an ocean I am drowning within left me bedridden for long periods of days in a time I could not sleep I do see the irony. It was during those earlier months I drew the preliminary sketches for a some of my paintings Between Two Worlds, To Dream, and As The Sun Sets and As The Sun Rises.

February Preliminary Washes

After The Canvases Are Made

Nothing was going to hold me back by the 1st of February I had completed the Rabbit Skin Glue layers of her canvas. This was about me beginning to make the work again.