An Unfinished Life

In 2011, my sister Stephenie was diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer. She was 33 years old at the time, and I - the big sis - was barely 36. It was to become a death sentence. A prolonged one. She passed away quietly just 2 months ago.
The past few years were very tense, yet unravelled and chaotic, most of the time. She had so many surgeries - dangerous ones, at that - and so many emergencies. It was a hard road. Not only for her, but for all of us. As for its effect on me, I felt lost because I had never been so close to something so perilous before with someone I love, who is just like me - the only one with the same 2 parents, the same genetics, the same bloodline. And she was my baby sis, someone I'd fight for quite literally in our youth (if anyone ever threatened her). And she watched out for me too, in ways I'm just beginning to see. We were lifetime best friends. We were as close as sisters can be. But this time I had no control and no way to save her.
I've been in therapy for quite a long time (for other reasons), but my counselor knows I deal with issues and emotions I can't control through art, especially painting. That way, I have some sort of exertion over what's happening. Because painting anything is MY version of the world, for better or worse. She advised me to paint something with Steph in it, so I did.
And this is it. It's unfinished. This is Steph at home watching TV, as it was what she did most of every day if she wasn't at the hospital. Originally there were supposed to be angels hovering above in the glow with their hands on her abdomen, healing the cancer. Her 2 dogs and cat were to be in it too, as well as her IV pole. But when I started it in 2012, I quickly ran out of energy and never finished it. A friend of mine who was a hospice nurse and had a brother dying from cancer as well saw this version and said "It's sad, it's depression." And oddly I had never seen it that way, because to me it was "unfinished." But she had a point. I decided I would photograph the unfinished painting and keep it for what it is.
I don't know if I will ever finish it or not - sometimes I think so, other times not so much. But if I do, this will be the first of a diptych, the other painting will be "A Life Fulfilled." But for now, this is how Steph's life was toward the end...someone too young with so much life inside brought low quietly to an untimely end. I can't believe she's not here. But just because her end on this earth was tragic, she did leave it peacefully and quietly, understanding the nightmare was over and she could finally rest. I think the way she lived her life toward the end, with an odd calmness I'd never seen before, is a testament unto itself. In retrospect, I believe she will have had a gigantic and positive effect on those of us still alive, those who knew her well or not at all. I want to make the next painting about that, if I decide to start one. For now though, since her death is still so close and overwhelming for me to see beyond it, I have this painting, "An Unfinished Life."
Right now, I can just say to her with comfort, "I'll see you again! Later, poopyhead."

In Memoriam
Stephenie Michele Holmberg (née Fitts)
June 29, 1977 - Sept 25, 2014

Forgive Me

"Forgive Me" ©2007 16"x 20" Acrylic on Canvasboard

This one wasn't initially a self-portrait. I don't look like this anymore...and especially not the time that I actually painted it. It was made in the first half of 2007 when my grandmother was in the hospital, and was soon to pass on. It was a very sad 6 months, but for some reason, I felt good too. I'm thinking it was some sort of overcompensation for knowing I was going to lose my last living grandparent soon, I needed something to keep me going. So I had a lot of experimentation with "nice" colors in my paintings, and it was also the most prolific I had ever been in churning out paintings day after day. I think I was trying to counterbalance the sadness.

When I finished this one, I brought it in with me while I visited my therapist (as  I would typically do) thinking "This is a pretty nice-looking painting compared to the other stuff I do, it's got pink in it!" But when I showed it to my therapist, he took a long look at it and then said... "Forgive you for what?"

It kind of shocked me then, but now I can completely see what he saw. My pain, the so-called whitewashing of it (or "pink-washing" if you want to get technical), the beauty in the pretense I was trying to put forward -"I'm totally fine right now. No, REALLY!" while it was completely apparent I was not. Beauty and pain and a lot of guilt for stopping seeing my Grandma in the hospital three months after she'd been in there, and another three months before she died. The sacrificial nature of it (crown of thorns) - I'd been told not to go back to see her, to remember her as she was, BY my therapist, and I think he was right in the end to tell me to stop.  (I had too much difficulty with it and was quite literally shutting down during the hospital visits with my parents - as in, I couldn't even finish walking to the door when we'd leave, I'd have to collapse on the floor and try not to fall asleep/pass out. Every time. I wasn't helping my Grandma, and I was not helping myself or my parents, either).

In the end, I actually gave this picture to my therapist (who was also a very good friend and I'd been seeing him in therapy for 13 years by then) free of charge. He deserved it, he had done me a lot of good. He was graciously thankful. Then, barely two years later in June 2009, my therapist died, himself, at the young age of 54 to an illness he'd had for as long as I'd known him. It was devastating. Several months later, his wife (whom I also miss very much) sent me back two paintings - and this was one of them. I never thought I'd see it again, and hoped she would keep it as a reminder of him and how good of a doctor he was and so careful but honest with me, too. So much so that you could even argue that he was a family friend. He cared so much about his patients. But it was sent back to me in November that year, with a note she wrote about how well he thought of me and my "struggle" to take back my life. That he had loved the two paintings I'd given him, but he was no longer here. To let the painters be a reminder to me of how much he had cared for me. Things had come full circle.

Now when I look at this painting, and the "Forgive me..." title...the pain, the roses and the woman my therapist knew was actually me (before I did!) and his very sincere question, "Forgive you for what?" and remember that with the very few people I knew back then, I had done nothing to be forgiven for. Not even for stopping seeing my Grandma in the last 3 months of her life (which was spent in a semi-conscious/fully medicated netherworld, where she was unreachable by the living) and knowing that she would have wanted me to remember her as she was when she was well. I also know my therapist would want the same of me. So this painting is of the pain and the beauty of knowing and loving the two people I had known in good times and bad, and in their last time on earth. Now I know what my therapist was trying to say, that there was nothing I needed to be forgiven for.

Just Get It Over With

"Just Get It Over With" ©2008

This is actually a self-portrait in the non-metaphorical sense, because I was using a photo of myself for this one. Waiting, boredom, more waiting, more boredom...this is a universal problem. As for me I despise it, but I'll wait if I have to if it's for something important. But many times it's not. You could be in line at Disneyland (except you'd be sweating profusely in the hot sun), or you could be in a doctor's office for a checkup or on the freeway in gridlock. You could be in Sociology class, waiting for your (terrifying) turn to give your speech on small businesses in front of 40 other students. And you HATE public speaking! Hurry up and wait. Whatever it is, all you can do while waiting is think "will someone hurry up and JUST GET IT OVER WITH?!" 

Eventually, you'll get there. It just sometimes takes a while. Until you do, though - this painting may also be you.

Watching Life Passing Me By

I painted this sometime around 2001/02.  I had been stricken with an illness - mental illness - severe enough to keep me from enjoying life or even other people (although part of that is just because I'm very introverted, which compounded the problem). Severe clinical depression - among other things - just kept bitch-slapping me left and right, up and down. I love my home, especially my bedroom-studio combo, but it became just another form of solitary confinement and imprisonment. I had done nothing wrong! Hence the angel in distress. I had so much to deal with inside my head AND outside (the suicide of my aunt, my grandmother's aneurism that nearly killed her, dropping out of college AGAIN, and a multitude of other things) that I was paralyzed and found myself in my own private, lonely hell. I'm still here, actually. It's not always hell, but for the most part this is my "safe place" and when I leave it I become very paranoid and self-conscious, so it's easier not to leave. 

I've been here too long, beyond my self-imposed sentence. When I came here, I was 23 years old. This year I'll turn 40.

I've been here since 1997. I've seen life pass me by from faraway, longing to leave my prison to join it, but still feeling trapped at the same time. The worst part of all of it is that I'm the one holding the key and I could escape any time, but haven't.  Fortunately, my life began changing for the better in when my best-friend-turned-boyfriend from an art site online (we met in 2007) proposed to me in December 2010. We've been working toward a wedding plan since then, and we've had to postpone it a few times, but next year we hope to marry and settle in a new home, far from here. I'm about to be set free, to be with someone I love more than anything. And the strange part - I don't even think of it as a "prison break" so to speak...just a new phase of life. 

This time of self-imprisonment will be over soon enough, and I have so much more to look forward to. I won't even realize I've left! I have so much life to live. 

I won't remember this as a prison. I'll most likely remember it fondly, where my creativity had time to germinate and come to fruition. All this time, it's just been a holding cell, nothing more. Life will probably be harder (for someone like me), but it is so much more worth the trouble. I can't imagine anything better. I have so much hope. The "angel in distress"/prisoner of no crime doesn't have to watch life from afar anymore. I am a part of it, finally.

The Oppression Of Unbridled Boredom

I think all of us have been here. Boredom and complete lack of initiative or energy to do anything. Maybe, more appropriately, complete burnout. Growing up I was easily bored. And in adulthood it's still here. I'm nearly 40 years old (at this writing - I've got 6 months left in my thirties) and somehow I thought this might change once I grew up. But... nope.

Not to mention - as anyone who knows me knows, I'm not that excitable a person. I've been depressed before...it's gone and returned and gone and, again, returned...and this is the closest visual representation of that depression that I could paint at the time of this piece. "The Unbridled Oppression Of Boredom," © 1999-2000. There's so much going on in depression, clinically speaking. You're tired or exhausted most of the time. It's impossible to get out of bed ("And why would anyone want to?" you think) but not really possible to sleep either. People think you're lazy, but you aren't. And when you can feel, the heaviest weight sits on your heart. At the worst, I lost all feeling altogether. Not "not caring" so much as not even being able to care. I desperately wanted a feeling, ANY feeling, even pain, rather than that nothing. Fortunately I was a lot younger then (in 1994-5 when this started), and that horrible absence of emotion has been gone ever since. But in the painting, the ennui, the boredom and pointlessness - it's all there. Why stand up? Why put on clothes? Why eat anything? Why try to escape your gray world? The deprivation is like a strong hunger which cannot be filled.

I painted this within 5 years of that horrific emotionless state, it was a lot fresher in my mind then. Fortunately, my family understood I needed help, and I did get it. Medically and therapeutically.  Sometimes depression is not only a state of mind, it's biological and clinical. It's a disease of the brain, with low supplies of certain neurotransmitters and too much of others. Within a few months of treatment I was able to feel. It takes a while. But when you're in that awful, mental, hard concrete cell, there's no future but now.

 And there I was. Starving, crying for no reason, bored to near death, no upside to look at. This painting was, for a very long time, my only reality. It will probably happen again. I don't know the future. But if this depiction, this painting, helps anyone relate or begin to understand what this is like - if they've been through it, are in it now, or know someone else they love who is stuck in the middle of this wasteland of the mind, and can think about this without judgement for not "pulling yourself up by your bootstraps" (I wish it were that simple!) - I've done my job. What happens next - help or no help - is up to you.

What Have I Become?!

Either it's just me, or everyone has been here. You do something dumb, and then go from merely "dumb" to "callous" to "outrageously stupid and mean." Even worse is when it goes on and on and you don't notice any of it (while everyone around you does), until one day you finally do something so bad, you see all the hurt you've caused to people you love. You can actually see the grotesque being you have become in the mirror. "What have I become?!"

This may actually be more about me, or even the nature of mental illness itself, than anyone else, but I'd like to think I'm not alone in this position. I painted this over 2 nights or so in 2003, with a companion piece that isn't quite so detailed. I remember when I finally went to sleep after a night of painting (well, 2 of them) that this actually scared me to look at across the room from my bed! (I live in my studio). But it just goes to show, no one likes to be confronted with who they might sometimes turn into. But it's even worse when you accuse yourself of this when you haven't done anything wrong, either. Be careful (and accurate!) when passing judgment on yourself or anyone else, or this is who you'll find in the mirror.

HORSE

I did this painting toward the end of 2007 during a very prolific time. I was making about a painting a DAY (which for me is really fast - most take several weeks - or months - usually) that whole year. I wasn't doing much introspective work, I was doing these on a whim, trying to break out of the shell of having every face be "structurally proportional" with accurate bone structure and symmetry. I was just having fun! I called this one "Horse" (©2007) because duh - look at it! Sarah Jessica Parker has nothing on this guy. Enjoy!

Well, I've been busy!

I've been pretty tied up because of problems in my family of the "life or death" kind, among other issues related only to me, so I had abandoned my work for about a week or two. Anyway, this morning I got back to work on Mr. Fireface here (NOT the working title!)... as you can see...

This is what it looked like when I finished the last time (whenever that was...), but I began again. Here it is, mid-process...

So I've done some re-evaluation on the dark and light parts. Right now, this is the current painting - but I'm coming back to it soon! Maybe after I get some coffee.

The Labor Of Rebirth By C-Section

"THE LABOR OF REBIRTH BY C-SECTION" ©2001 Jeni Fitts

This was done when I was about 25-26 years old. I was coming to terms with life and death and mental illness. The life I'd lived up to that point was shrouded and hidden away deep inside, even from myself. Many of those parts of me are still hidden today...I'd been in counseling for five years back then. Loved ones were dead too soon, others were in the process of dying...I was stuck in my home making paintings and felt ignored, as though the world didn't even know I existed...so I went through a rebirth of sorts. Everything held inside, all the darkness had to come out. Immediately. I was a person that had to change fundamentally. Between 1999-2001 I did, and it was the most grueling, painful "rebirth" I've yet gone through. All secrets and deeds, all thoughts and anger never expressed - but ignored and stuffed away - all had to come out at once. I've never been a mother, but that's what I imagined giving birth must feel like...although only if the mother is fully awake and unanesthetized during a Caeserian. All that came out from inside me then is gone, but there are always other things growing within like cancer that have to be purged emotionally by artistic means. This painting is an expression of what it felt like to be split open and exorcised. It'll happen again and again. That's just life. You can't heal by ignoring your pain, that will only last for a while. If you do, it will come back when you least expect or are least equipped to deal with it and it's possible to have it knock you down dead. That almost happened to me at age 20. I've seen it happen to others. Whatever your medium (painting/drawing, music, film, writing, praying, anything), use it to your advantage when you can. It can be done! You can survive near-death and come back with a vengeance. That cliché which says "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger" is true, but only if you act on it. Not if you just sit there and let it eat you alive. It's your decision! It's worth it...from caterpillar to coccoon to butterfly. It'll be ugly at first, but when it's done you can rest, and become that much closer to freedom.

Slow To Anger

SLOW TO ANGER ©Jeni Fitts 2002

I painted this 12 years ago to describe how I felt being on too many medications for my health. I could think rationally and was painting all the time, but everything was at such a slow pace due to the meds. Speech was slowed, movement was slowed, and I was tired all the time. And angry. Mainly at all the "extra" medications I'd been prescribed that I really didn't need (not to say that I didn't need the primary meds, I did. But there were too many others added that did the same as the primary ones...I had a duplicate for every original prescription), and the doctor who made me take them. I was also in a clinical depression that - by definition - literally slows you down anyway. I didn't need all the extra baggage! It was a fight just to get anything done, even just around the house. To do the dishes, turn on a TV. To get out of my bed! And I was stuck here, the house was my entire world. And I hated it. So this is one of the responses I had to all of it - this painting. Slow to anger. Slow to speak, slow to move, slow to react, feeling frozen and unable to move around...like a cold zombie struggling to stand up. But angry, still...and once this zombie finally stands, get the hell out of the way. The mind was/is still sharp as a tack. The cold rigor mortis of the body was doctor-induced. But now I can finally move, and I feel better every day. This painting is of a time that has ended, mercifully. 

Her Rage Drained Her Like A Vampire

"Her Rage Drained Her Like A Vampire" ©2002 Jeni Fitts

Suicide. Again. Maybe I'm not so different from you, that maybe you have known someone who has died by their own hand...maybe it was you who attempted it and survived. Maybe you've just thought about it fleetingly. For my aunt whom I love, she was successful. And it was made possible - for her and for many others - not only out of depression or desperation, but by the anger and pent-up rage that has no outlet. That's what it was for me in 1994, when I tried to die. I never spoke to anyone about anything ever, and all the rage from my broken brain (because I was legitimately mentally ill) and my broken heart and - finally - broken dreams after I was forced to quit college because of my frequent panic attacks in class, I decided "That's it. Final straw." For me and most other people rage was a factor. It claws and gnaws at you all the time, even in sleep! My nightmares then were proof of it. And so much displaced rage. I've heard the phrase "Depression is rage turned inward, against yourself", and I agree. It's a life-sucking, blood drinking vampire. The difference is the choice before you. When you get to that point, do you let your anger kill you - or do you finally open up to someone and start talking so that it lessens? For me, I opened up, and I lived. For my aunt, she did not, and died. You have to be a willing victim and accomplice to that "vampire" in order for it to drain you. And yeah, there's a choice. There's ALWAYS a choice. Don't play the victim. Live.

Breakthroughs Don't Come Easy!

And that's exactly what this painting is about, breakthroughs. I did this in 2004 during a deep, dark, clinical depression that lasted most of the year. I was trying to get free of it, it wasn't working. Eventually I did! And this is how it felt...gray, dark, like the line in a U2 song ("Until The End Of The World") - "I was drowning in sorrows, but my sorrows - they learned to swim..." My own sorrows were pulling me down, my demons came for me. Still, I got free. It took a long time and I've had to do it again and again. Breakthroughs don't come easy. But they do come! You have to fight for it.

How to Really Screw Up A Painting... A Second Time! (Update/New Finished Painting)

When I last left off on this painting, it looked like this.

But nope, I wasn't intending to go this way. It looks less human, less female, and too yellowy for my taste. It no longer fits the emotion I started with. Instead, it's turning into a sort of zombie-like monster (which isn't bad at all, but still not what I was going for). My original intention was more like this (and if you've been here before, you should recognize it)...

...a projection of myself, blinded by fear. Hence the title (you guessed it!): Blinded By Fear. But since there is no longer any physical painting of this version, I'll be selling it as a print only. As far as the current zombie version...I will finish it, but it will be quite different. Monstrous!

Why Did You Leave Me?

This one is ooooooooooooooooold! From 1999. Apparently I have abandonment issues...in 1999 I really tried to take the bull by the horns. Attack the pain, destroy everything. Like the Meshuggah album, "Destroy, Erase, Improve." This is pain. This is therapy. Art heals.

Sometimes I Take Photos

This is just one. I like to take shots of common things around the house and make them unrecognizable. The idea is to get the viewer to see familiar things in a different way. Enjoy!

Weakness In Its Purest Form

The title is in reference to a Crowbar album (Sonic Excess In Its Purest Form) that I got around the time I did this painting (just after Christmas 2003). Around then many things were changing and I didn't think I was up to life's demands. I still can't listen to that Crowbar album without feeling pain. This is basically a self-portrait, which I could say for any painting of mine, no matter the subject. So much promise,  ability, and fury... and unable to use any of it.

New Facebook Page!

It's a bit sparse because I just put it up today, but I'm working on it! ENJOY! https://www.facebook.com/provokingdrama

Old Classics: "NOVEMBER", 2001

November

In late Nov. of 2000, my aunt - my mom's sister - committed suicide. The problem was that she was so emotionally troubled and so drained of life. This, and a lack of good medical/psychological help that may have saved her. The loss of her was unbearable for more than just my immediate family (so much so that I've lost a lot of memory of most of 2001), and I did many paintings about it and the way it haunted me, since I had been suicidal for all of my teen years and beyond until I DID get proper medical care. I could relate, up until then. After my aunt died I swore off suicide for any reason and still stand by that vow. I would only force those who love me into abject despair. When the 1st anniversary of her death came in Nov 2001, I was a complete mess, so I used my art to help me. This painting is how I felt November might make me feel for years to come, that the memories of the dead - and Death itself - would come back to torment me yearly. This painting is from that 1st anniversary in 2001. And yes, it helped. A little bit.

Still Evolving...

The last time I left off with my most recent work, it looked like this:

I liked it, but it still seemed too inhuman, and even though this is more abstract for me than usual, it still had lost its humanity. So today I was doodling around with my brushes and continued to this:

 Slightly better, but things still seem off. So I kept painting, and as of now, I'm pausing with this:

And I think I'll stay here for the moment.

Old Classics

"I Wish I Could Remember Your Face"

I painted this in 1999/2000 when I was starting to finally get my "art-mojo" working for the first time. Every painting I do is a self portrait, no matter the subject or image. At this time, I was trying to overcome the pain of a therapist who was the first ever to help me out of very serious depression. He was only a resident, and took care of me for several months. At that point he probably knew more about me than anyone else. A few months later, he took a new job after his residency was over. I was blindsided by this, still extremely sick, and devastated. I did many paintings like this to work my pain out. For the first time I realized how much power and healing there is in expressing yourself on canvas. I've painted ever since.

Now, We're Going Back.

Since we last let off, I've been working on the original screw-up to go back to normal.

So I worked for a while and got to something beginning to resemble the original idea.

Slightly better! Later I came to stop at this point...

And this is where I decided I was done for the night. Still in reverse, but at least now I have a point where I can start back over again. So I'm happy with it! 

How to Really Screw Up A Painting

So...when I last posted this painting it looked like this:

Which is totally fine and dandy, I was happy. But it's still not done.

So, the last time I worked on it, I tried to add some..."personality", I guess one would say. So I added an upturned lip, some teeth, and made the eye bigger, and unhappily it then looked like this...

And damn! I was pissed with myself. It's too cartoonish and less realistic (relatively speaking)! Since this photo though, I went away for the Christmas holiday and went back to the painting the same night I came home. It's looking better now, I backtracked a good bit. So, until the next updated evo, your going to have to look at this misstep. Enjoy! Or...not? Up to you.
Both photos copyright Jeni Fitts, 2014