All of Me

As my little coffee house art show, scheduled for November, begins to take shape, I've found a name for it--All of Me. 

I'm working with a writer friend to make it a larger project, beyond just the art, because we've realized that these portraits I paint are really aspects of me. And that all of us, especially women, spend a lifetime working toward wholeness. We have these pieces of ourselves that others consider "beautiful" or not and what we present to the world is largely about what we've accepted in ourselves. I want the art to be a gateway into working with women to help them explore and integrate these fractured, fragmented selves, finding ways for us to heal what's split apart and love it into wholeness. 

This piece I called Medicine Woman. Usually I don't name my art until later and usually the names are kind of lame. But this one started with me journaling about being a healer, resisting that idea a little, but also knowing that it's somehow my fate. I attract wounds and wounded people and do my best to heal them. But I'm just leaning into that a little more. In the past, I've done it unconsciously, which has caused me a lot of psychic pain and drama. Now I'm thinking I need to do this more mindfully, with an eye first to caring for myself. The "put on your own oxygen mask first" school of healing. 

She went through many iterations. The red at her neck is a hint of how she began. I most like the fractured looking cross-hatching on the left side of her face. I realized as I did it that I was playing with the idea of fractures and brokenness and also the idea that for me, being a medicine woman is about integrating Light and Shadow--accepting ALL of ourselves, especially as women.