In Other Mediums: Oil & Charcoal on Canvas

"Leaving," Oil & Charcoal on Canvas, Spring 2012

Lovie wears a die cut fish around her patchwork neck, stitched and re-stitched in hopes this time will be the last... surgery, radiation treatment, cold night under the highway overpass.  The name of the Lord is inscribed in the center of the fish. " I know that He brought me through this for a reason, even so I can help someone else," she tells me.  Lovie also tells me that she used to have to watch her weight when she waitressed at the Olive Garden.  "Too many darn breadsticks."  And that she loves chicken Colorado.  And that it hurts the most when she's alone, and it's so dark... when she's the one home has run away from.

This is the first of a series of paintings that consider our real and imagined relationships with home-- as a place, as a community, as somewhere to belong.  During the process, I met Lovie.  And my associations with "home" rapidly changed... much quicker than my consciousness.  Painting became the process through which I actualized the experience of a fleeting home and the sense of abandon and desolation that appears in the void.

Though her name has been changed, Lovie is very real.  And there are millions like her.  What is the value of home?  Of belonging?  What would you feel to spend an hour in homelessness or as a refugee?  What about a year?  And who would help you?  Would you?