Keep Showing Up
The painting above called “Anguish” by August Schenck gives us the raw emotion of motherhood and loss. Without words, without sound, without explanation you see this painting and you know exactly what August was trying to express. It is honest, it hides nothing and you know he showed up 100% to create it. There is not a brush stroke that lacks emotion. Although heart wrenching in many ways this painting actually is one of strength for me now. I loved it and wept over it before I even truly knew it. Now I know it better than my own voice. Now I am the mother sheep.
What makes this painting so important to me is the honesty in it and the path to healing that can come when we face such truths. In this painting I find hope in the expression of what is almost unexplainable with words. This was painted so long ago and yet it is timeless because it captures a grief that is universal.
Kienan and I spent endless hours creating art and talking about how the hardest part of being an artist for us was just showing up in our own skin. How creating art without the fear of judgment or criticism was more difficult than any technique we had spent endless hours learning. Honest art was the art we loved, it was the art that saved us a million times over and what we wanted to create. Kienan believed with every fiber in their body that art was the universal human connector and I agree.
After Kienan’s death I could hardly get myself into clothes so creating art seemed near impossible. I was exhausted, in shock, and scared. Scared that I would not recognize myself in this ocean of grief, would not recognize my art, but mostly that Kienan’s absence would be too much for me to absorb in the place where all our dreams thrived. The studio was our safe place and it always took both of our energy to keep it thriving. I could not imagine it without them. I was scared I would create art that was dark in a way unhelpful and suffocating to others. Then I remembered Anguish and I revisited it once again with new eyes. I marveled at the fact that even if you looked at this painting without the images it would still speak the same language through the color palette, though the heavy shapes of black surrounding the soft blends of neutrals, through the title. Even in its rawness it did not drag me down but because I became so intimate with anguish itself the painting had helped me feel less alone. It told me to show up and see what happens and let the art do the rest of the work. To my surprise when I started painting again it did not take such a dark form as I expected, quite the opposite actually. I found although I was intensely mourning my brushstrokes were filled with abstract snapdragons and wild flowers, long paths of changing greenery and in colors of greens and pinks, purples and oranges. All things Kienan. It was then I realizes I would never be in that studio all alone. Because I show up, so too does Kienan, and together as promised we will let the art take care of the rest.