THERE WAS A CANCER, 2023: Acrylic, found objects, hot glue, washi tape, glitter on canvas

I had been thinking about the wood carved sugar skull that he wore on his boutonniere when we married in ’07. It was literally one of the only things from our wedding that I didn’t burn in the bonfire after I threw him out.  When I was purging that first week, I had cast a spell on it and locked it up to keep him contained and out of our lives. I’m at the point now where i think of getting rid of it completely, but sometimes I fear undoing the juju. What if I open the box and he is held back no longer? What if the magic was actually keeping us safe.

I was thinking about painting it back into another spell of sorts; sewing it onto a canvas and then containing it in a visual bubble. Then I wanted to surround the rest of the canvas with beautiful colors and flowers and everything that is joyous and good. Yet, I still don’t really want to take it out of it’s little box.

So this canvas took on the concept, but without the juju. I went back to the comfort of the circles and swirls representing all things in life enjoyed and had that separated from the deep center that was his darkness.  It was resembling a little rotten seed when I came upon our favorite unicorn spangle, so that got embedded in the center- as it was his pursuit of the unicorn, Ama, that eventually destroyed any hope of reconciliation or repair.

It was then that it came to me that THERE WAS A CANCER.  His mental health, whatever the cause, whatever the diagnosis, the abuse, the narcissism, was indeed a cancer that spread and infected every inch of our lives. Acknowledging that there was nothing that I did to cause this as it was planted long before I was around and nothing I could have done to prevent it. The glass bead at the bottom, the foundation of it all, the the initial cancer cell and we have the have the leaf, signifying life and growth of the disease. The seed was always there. The metal cage is the sad attempt to contain the destruction while, of course, denying its very existence. Recreated are my attempts. Many of them are just simple and childish, a flower, a heart, a ribbon, just as many of my attempts to understand or change the outcome were. How we pretended to build this beautiful life over nothing but air, made of nothing but a fake shine> Everything is pretty and shiny, meant to awe on distract from what is underneath. Just as I did in the marriage, I slowly moved them, woven beautify into our lives, in and out, trying to create daydreams on a rotten core.

But it didn’t matter. And in the end, when I was finished, I saw, it was just a gilded cage.  In the end, the marriage was likewise, still a prison.