14 inch by 18 inch
Acrylic on Black paper
Pain
"Even intense pain often eludes accurate description, as Virginia Woolf reminds us in her essay "On Being Ill": "English [...] has no words for the shiver and the headache ... let a sufferer try to describe a pain in his head to a doctor and language at once runs dry."'
-Diane Ackerman, A Natural History of the Senses
Artist statement:
I've been dealing with chronic headaches and migraines since I was a preteen. I've tried various painkillers; some work, some don't. It's been taxing on my mental health and is not explainable to someone who suffers an occasional head pain. I used the complimentary red and green colors dulled down, as well as a monstrous figure, to try to show the grotesqueness of chronic pain.
6 inch by 4 inch
Acrylic on black paper
Tattoos
"Those with tattooed faces, hands, and heads have chosen, in a way, to seal themselves off from normal society forever"
-Diane Ackerman, A Natural History of the Senses
Artist statement:
I found it interesting that this segment comes right after 'animals', who Ackerman says also rely heavily on touch, so I made a lighthearted print of a mean-looking cat with a tattoed back and leg. This cat and I (who have four tattoos) are permanently and uniquely different than our furry or skin-clad peers.
