Spiritual Journey: Part 3

In the end, what affects your life most deeply are things too simple to talk about.

Nell Blaine

This is a continuation of a story I began a few posts back, how I've noticed my artwork really does tell my story.

Eventually, the surgeries subsided and I slowly began to control this disease. A lot of the time, I felt okay. I was told many times by my parents, especially, how they respected me for my strength during these two major episodes, serious illness and a divorce. I went back to work. I travelled. I exercised. I painted.

I was drawn to recreating images from Old Masters drawings in monochromatic colors. The images I was most attracted to, and worked on, were of strong appearing women. Here is one I finished, a self portrait of sorts.

Spiritual Journey: Part 2

Over the years your bodies become walking autobiographies, telling friends and strangers alike of the minor and major stresses of your lives.

Marilyn Ferguson

This is a continuation of a story I began about how I got to be where I am and how it's all recorded in the pieces I have created, unknowingly at the time.

Soon after my divorce I began to get sick, eventually being diagnosed with Irritable Bowel, specifically Ulcerative Colitis. These autoimmune diseases, so rampant now (or seemingly rampant because they are now named with diagnoses) are due to unknown causes but it is thought stress is a major factor. I am convinced that the stress of my marriage breaking up initially caused the disease. To make a very long story short, I eventually had to have my entire large intestine removed, replaced with a "handmade" interior pouch, functioning basically the same way. Unfortunately I was included in the 5% that are not healed by this process, and then I was re-diagnosed with Crohn's disease, which I live with today, and is similar to Colitis in many ways. For about a 4 year period I was really sick and had quite a few surgeries to replace and repair. When life became a little easier I noticed I was putting "stitches" on a lot of my pieces. Also during this period I my husband (7 years have passed by now) took a lot of photographs of my belly in an attempt to make my body look beautiful. He made a lot of "landscapes". Images are included below.