It hits me out of nowhere; at any moment. Most recently, it has come in moments of intensity, when I'm extremely joyous or feeling hopeless. It takes a hold of me and suddenly, only for a small, but very significant, moment, everything stops. My whole body feels it. It's as though I am being smashed between two heavy mattresses, yet at the same time all of the weight is lifted from my being, and I am able to float. It's as though I have been enclosed in a tiny box, but at the same time am thrown out into the open abyss. My mind races to record everything I see and feel in that moment so that I might remember it forever. A fleeting sense of understanding and clarity, a grand epiphany, engulfs me. You are real. I am real. We are real. This is all real. Then it's gone.
When recalling the experience I can visualize myself in the setting that I was in. I see me and my environment, but also the close-ups of the details my mind scanned to remember.
I decided to take this concept and translate it into the visual. I have constructed a tapestry by using appliqué and reverse appliqué techniques. It is made out of colored cotton fabrics, some of which I dyed myself. It is a self portrait in the instant of the realization. I decided to make the background simple rectangular shapes, because in that instant everything freezes and becomes so simple and understandable.
Author, Annie Dillard, has a similar experience: "This is it, I think, this is it, right now, the present, this empty gas station, here, this western wind, this tang of coffee on the tongue, and I am patting the puppy, I am watching the mountain. And the second I verbalize this awareness in my brain, I cease to see the mountain or feel the puppy. I am opaque, so much black asphalt. But at the same second, the second I know I've lost it, I also realize that the puppy is still squirming on his back under my hand."
What was on the moodboard::
When hits you that this is real...
Something takes over your entire everything...
[ http://www.keithperelli.com/ ]
And it kind of feels like this in slow motion
But only for an instant.
20.5 in x 36 in
I realize that it looks more like a guy and has way more of a shocked expression than I intended it to and I realized it's because of they outlining of the eyes. She has no eyelashes.
But. I still like how it came out. (psst i also forgot my earring. dont tell anyone)
Here's the original drawing
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