The Birth of an Idea

When I was in school, I adored art class. It was the one place where I could let my creativity soar and not get mocked by my peers for it. I was very lucky to attend a public school that had a very strong arts program, both in music and in visual arts. The visual arts captured my attention a bit more, however, as I struggled to keep my voice in line enough with the rest of the choir to not get yelled at by the not very nice choir director I had in elementary school. Little did I know that was my autism making an appearance, but that's a story for another day. Today, I'm going to tell you about how a stray thought 20 years ago led to me finishing an art project I never thought would come into being.

There's something about the feel of a pencil or paintbrush in your hand that is very grounding. Feeling that physical object pressing against your finger feels odd at first, but once the ideas start to form it merely is an extension of your flesh, moving as you dictate to bring the vision in your mind to life. When I was younger, art was easier then. My imagination flowed freely because I wasn't held up by knowing the damage and trauma that was accumulating from the abuse I was living through. I was naive enough to not be able to name it yet. Ideas fell from my fingertips like raindrops from storm clouds, fast and furious in their intensity with a forceful beauty that took my breath away.

I spent over 40 hours between classroom time, study halls, and skipping lunches on my first canvas painting. I remember stretching the cotton, painting it with the gesso, and how each little stroke of the brush spurred me to go further, to do more. That was the same year that this idea came to me. I had to get it from my mind to paper, and I wouldn't be satisfied until I did so. I was drawing in Algebra, having long since completed the homework ahead of everyone else, and was bored out of my skull. That was the magic moment that an idea happened.

Eventually figuring out I was autistic as an adult only a few years ago, I realized that I have a tendency to fixate and focus on certain ideas until something resolves them in my mind. That's what the first thought was, a nagging idea about something in the world that I didn't understand why it was the way it was. Those sort of "illogical" things, at least to my young mind, always troubled me the most. So, I fixated on a single question: "If the drama masks were meant to represent human emotions, why were they separate and not one combined face?"

Then the idea was born and had to flow from my mind through my fingers to pencil and page. I used what colored pencils I had access to, and created what I saw in my mind's eye. This was just after the 90s and the idea of my cousin's trippy 60s and hippy blacklight reactive posters popped into my head, that cartoony, almost graffiti-like style on so many of her decorations and covering her walls. Her room looked like a 90s Spencers Gifts figuratively threw up inside, and the image and "coolness" of that cousin had a large impact on me. So, I leaned into that cartoony style for the happy half of the piece.

For the sad side, I had no real reference to work off of, so I reached for the only thing I knew was "sad" on a logical level: graveyards and their art. My grandparents lived across from a small cemetery at the end of their block. Barely larger than a suburban lot in the heart of North Jersey, that cemetery was an almost magical place for toddler me, filled with strange and fascinating statues, tall trees that gave comforting shade from the summer sun, and monuments to people long gone that gave me places to climb and explore. Of course, I never climbed on the tombstones themselves, but one larger family monument had a low railing that was a perfect child's balance beam, punctuated by small stones to hold the pipe railing in place. It became a game to avoid stepping on where the "sleeping people" were, and I'd say hi to them like they were old friends. My grandmother would spend hours walking around that little cemetery, holding my hand and just talking with me. In 8th grade, that was the closest to loss I had ever been, so that was all I could picture and recreate. A sad, haunted visage textured like stone, frozen forever in a sob of grief.

I didn't know what this image would become, what it would come to represent. I gazed on it years ago, trying to see where else it would lead me. I tried, about 10 years ago, to bring the rest of the ideas to life... but it fell woefully short. My fingers were blocked and hampered by some of the worst traumas I have lived through, the darkest chapters of my existence. I couldn't find my inspiration without it feeling stilted and forced. I didn't know that this simple image would, many years later, create a spark that would grow into one gleaming flame against the darkness of my mind, against the horrors of my past.

I didn't know something momentous had occurred with this simple little drawing.

This was the beginning, the first step of a project that I completed just as 2022 dawned with the final coat of paint on the last canvas. I'll be posting more of the journey and explaining every step of the process as I go, taking you along for the ride.