Media: Digitally painted in FireAlpaca
“Anxiety (A self reflection)” is a self portrait spurred out of a sudden drop in my physical health that led to my underlying General Anxiety Disorder coming to surface enough to finally being diagnosed.
The days following my diagnosis but before therapy were tortuous, and as I laid in bed rest with the disorder on my mind for hours I finally got fed up of being so trapped in my thoughts and resolved all my strength to get up and work on this piece in one fell 3-hour swoop while experiencing a stabbing pain in my abdomen and chest. Depicted are what it physically felt like to be at the height of this mental illness, clouding my vision and spurring lip biting as a nervous habit gone wrong with a pale skin tone from lack of regard for my health. Now, after a lot of help and working on myself this piece serves as a marker of how far I’ve come. I couldn’t be more proud.
Published and exhibited for REFLECTION, OCADU’s fifth annual First Generation Program publication. Got to eat a bunch during the opening night, my dad, unfortunately, missed that night so we went to lunch to go see it but the building was closed (I don’t know why?) so we stood outside and peeked at it through the window and talked about making painful art. So surprisingly I got some nice memories out of that need to put my unwellness into art.