I painted this self-portrait Wednesday evening through Thursday morning and did some tweaking on Friday. It wasn’t in my planning. Just as for Devastation is Blue, I hoped that brush and canvas could guide me somewhere. Because I’d be performing in an Art Battle the following week, I thought about practicing: creating a face within 20 minutes (the time I’d have to perform). 20 minutes up, I realized that the face was starting to look like me. So, I grabbed a mirror, kept on working. Working and crying and seeking soothing. This painting, and the process of making it became pacifier-like.

The more I painted, the more real my pain became. The more acute the pain, the greater the desire to paint and to get it right—make the best piece I possibly could. I looked at myself and myself looked at me. Not a self-portrait that I would really want to share or be proud of, but a self-portrait that had to emerge for the messages and truths it held--a reminder of horrible times before, as well as horrible times now, and ahead. Another tortured soul, but one who had given up, came into thought. In 2003, the morning after my sister-in-law killed herself, I painted my first self-portrait. It combined aspects of her and aspects of me. It was now hanging in a room adjacent to my studio. I put the two works side by side and gasped with quiet knowing. The person common to both our lives was the agony generator behind my painting (and pain).