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Anyone who has lost a loved one in his or her life knows how difficult it can be to overcome. The death of my mother in 1994 forever changed who I was then and who I was to become. I was at a point in my life where I was beginning to take my identity and place it in the world; it was a time when I needed my mother’s strength and encouragement the most. Without her constant love and reassurance, could I possibly survive? And thus began my journey of discovery, A JOURNEY THROUGH GRIEF. When I had originally proposed this project I wanted to create an illustrated journal about my experiences through grief since my mother’s death. Formal journal writing has always been a form of self-expression for me to record and gather my thoughts; when she died, the pages of my journal seemed endless. I was left with a collection of unresolved conflicts that needed to be sorted out in order to resolve the grief. The greatest conflict I needed to overcome was whether or not to move on with my life or remain in a constant state of bereavement. It wasn’t going to be the latter. For my project I wanted to transpose my words into images and capture the developmental processes through the stages of grieving. My goal was to use these emotions to find a deeper understanding about truth, life, and most importantly, myself. It was my intent to create 12 - 15 full-color collage illustrations on Strathmore heavyweight illustration board, hand-bound into a 9x12 journal. To my surprise, my work began to take on a shape of it’s own and the size of the paintings began to play a very important role in achieving my goal. Working in such a small format, albeit one that I was very accustomed to, seemed too limiting, too constricting. I felt as though I was trying to squeeze out the grief from my memory rather than letting it flow out. I needed more room to express these emotions and began working slightly larger, keeping in mind I needed to remain within book format. However, the messages still seemed unemotive and weren’t portraying what I felt. That was when I realized the only way to fully appreciate and understand what I was feeling was to leave the idea of a book. Books themselves are too restrictive in that they are a compact set of pages designed to open and close. I realized I couldn’t open and close the door to grief; in order to work through and learn how to respond to it, the pages needed to remain open at all times. The transformation of working from small to large was one I never thought I would have to take, nor one I truly wanted to. I approached working larger with considerable caution; after all I had already undergone enough change in my life. I was amazed at the changes my project took on. The words and images began to sing in a way that paralleled my own existence. My paintings grew into something I had only dreamed of. I finally gave myself the permission to feel and the space it needed. Not only was I amazed at the changes my project took on, but also the changes I took on as an artist and a human being. Since my mom died, my art career has been spent analyzing, nitpicking and obsessively perfecting every detail, and the small format made it difficult to free myself up mentally. It was my way of not dealing with my emotions. To my surprise I immediately took to painting larger. I seemed to pass through a transition from confusion to recognition, and felt I had now acquired the necessary tools to draw me closer to my goal. Everything felt right—as though I had been experiencing this for an eternity. Early on I realized grief couldn’t be consumed all at once, that it needed to be digested slowly. My project was a way for me to organize a disorganized self, and express the copious feelings jumbled inside of me. I realize my hurt will never go away; it simply gets smaller and smaller and is tucked away in my heart. |
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© 2000-2004
by Krista
Miller. |
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