This painting represents the initial shock of hearing, “I’m breaking up with you,” from someone you had planned your future with. The grey background and swirls represent the spiraling I had, repeating, thinking those words over and over. My heart raced (the black horizontal lines) and I felt… naked… alone… and I lost all feeling in my legs (the “shock”). I remember the car trip back, I wept and wept. When I was making this painting, I was having a hard time coming up with anything but really honing in on that first day… I would like to redo this painting to be more personal and similar to that hot car ride.

Being my ugliest, this represents my mindset at the time. I felt hollow (the lack of detail in the face) and the house (his house…), I felt like it was falling apart. The grimeness of the first hints of that glazing method, also allowed me to show someone who just focuses on what’s right in front of them rather than acknowledging the horrid truth around them. I wanted the house they are in to feel like it’s been that way for years and the photo is white and pristine. Visually, this painting was the first to show how I really felt about the break-up. When I was painting this, it was about 2 months after he broke things off and things hadn’t really been clear to me because we were still “in love” but we never said anything about it. I felt like I was already over him but I was not.

I’ve worked at a certain corporation for a while and often that’s where I am able to release my anger, my pain, my sadness, into making the best shopping experience I can. Sometimes, people (and receipts) are often too short and I don’t have the greatest time. My anger is best represented through my face because I can be deadpanned… but also I wanted to get that experience of walking up to the cashier for the first time. In the timeline of things, this was more about how I would use work to think about things and internalize them. This painting may seem unfinished because initially, it was. At this time, he brought another girl into the situation and completely dropped me. I isolated myself after this point and my grades started slipping.

Being atheist, I have always struggled with my relationship with God but I wanted to show that desperation in an intimate way.

Doom scrolling and my depression often go hand-in-hand. I’m often locked on the couch, spiraling for hours, wondering where all my time has gone. I feel lost and not real, the best way I could show that is by barely showing it. By having myself stare at the camera on the phone, I wanted to represent that feeling of wanting to be present but not being able to. In the context of things, they started dating and I paid rent and slept on the couch in the living room while they slept on my bed. She took the reference photo.

Getting past that depression hump means breaking out of old habits. The best way I could find to ground myself is to have a nice cup of coffee and sit on the front porch. I’m there but I stare at the empty spot beside me, maybe wishing for some company yet I sit alone.

Acceptance is supposed to be something pleasant but twisted in its own right. It’s giving up the old and welcoming the new. I willingly lay in a field of dead flowers and stare off in the distance at a new (top right corner), flourishing tree and don’t move. I don’t move.