I started this piece in October 2024 after making some realizations about my struggles with codependency. I feel my feelings deeply, with a paintbrush in hand. I started simply by perceiving myself through a painted portrait, but when I finished this I still felt bad. So I started building around. Over the 30 days this piece lived in my home studio, it began to swallow everything around me. Class assignments, empty boxes of cigarettes, all stuck to the wet paint. I was inspired largely by my time studying in Italy where I visited lots of altars in Cathedrals. I became obsessed with this idea of offerings and objects in the physical world having ties to the spiritual world. Every object on the altar is linked to a larger self realization. Tombstones for my misguided feelings that I put to bed one by one. Now that this portrait is complete, I look at it and feel a piece of myself inside it. As if I took the half of my consciousness that was rotting and replanted it as the seed for this artwork.
