Glances Between Lost Eyes
30” x 24” acrylic on canvas
Glances Between Lost Eyes is part one to the series ‘The Rebuild’. With this series I'm paying tribute to moments I've lost, could've lost, or still could loose. By paying tribute to those moments I've been able to rebuild my internal home and understand what unconditional self love really feels and looks like. All parts of this series are based off of free writings.
“A few too many somethings and a few too many lines blurred. The lights changed and so have the people around me but, a moment is all this is. But I haven’t felt it in so long. I didn’t know it was still there. The storm clouds became gently dancing stars even if just for a moment. Washed in dopamine, I leave the stars only for a moment. Each room I enter changes until the final one where I step in to meet you there. As you stare through the glass back to me, it’s a reminder that this is all going to fade in hours to come. A life spent chasing temporary highs is what I saw in those eyes. Eyes that couldn’t see because those winds and storms have stationed a permanent home in them like they were lost in the North sea. I heard the first sound of reason, ‘Is this what you want your life to look like?’. I think that was the first time I really saw the price to it all. I mean really saw instead of the muffled inner monologue I disassociated from because only the moment mattered to me. Then back to the stars as I brush off this jump to the future and back because I didn’t want to loose the moment. And each time I had to go back for the remainder of the night I just remember don’t look back into those eyes. Just look down.
Though I couldn’t head the warning, I still heard something. I still changed. Thankful for the somethings, someones and some-places that got me there because at least I knew that feeling was still there. It seemed like I hadn’t felt it since the days spent perched in the sun above the grass as a child when sitting in thought still felt like peace to me. The other train had left the station and the only way to get me off was to let it crash, but at least the spark of color did come back to the world. I could find ways to let it arise organically this time so I didn’t have to let it leave so abruptly.
Though I saw you and avoided you in hours to come, I wish I could have hugged you through that glass. I wish I could have sailed out to take you from that North sea. Maybe to the desert so then we could see the beauty of the flat lands together.”
The story behind ‘Glances Between Lost Eyes’
Part one to this series was a start in more ways than one. In a particularly self destructive time of my life, I became lost in the existentialism, grief and heart break which gave birth to the my desperate need to make myself into something others could want and love with no regard to the cost or care of whether it was truly genuine.
I felt so deeply that I had finally felt true self love during this campaign to be the life of every party. But self love can’t be true until it’s unconditional and what I felt during this time was solely based off what I could provide. So when my ride to full self destructive hit its peak and all I could give to world was that I was still breathing, my belief in my worth vanished.
This specific piece of free writing above is based on an evening in the midst of burying myself so deep into overconsumption of both toxic unauthentic on and off romance and substances (like many of us do in our early 20s). High on all of the above, I took a trip to the bathroom to see myself decades older staring back at me through the mirror. Immediately, I heard the words ‘is this what you want your life to look like’. My denial ran so deep I couldn’t let that sound of reason convince to change.
I think so much of this version of me I saw that night and so I pay tribute to her by making this painting of what I imagine to be a moment she could have missed if she stayed lost. Something so simple as laundry during magic hour, sun kissed in the desert. Simple but so beautiful with a storm just missing her on the horizon.
So many years later I think so much of that moment, wishing I could head the warning. Instead, I kept burling towards self destruction which launched me directly into what I call the cyclones in this series called ‘The Rebuild’. But regret is funny in this way. While I wish I could’ve avoided being lost for so so long, if I never got lost than I never would have painted this. I never would have been able to make something so beautiful out of something so bad.