Relief (draft)

Karen Black has painted an irresistible mirror that reflects my whole life back to me, tracing around each form I hold of myself. My thoughts about it are shapeless and incomplete, like the gentle attachment of colours to her canvas. It’s a careful application of the human body that to me tells a story of how to be woman, and the dressings of everything in between. Here I offer my response in the best way I know how. 

I can’t help but think I’m emerging from a deep womb, slathered in layers of red, just like the blood dislodged from every woman before me, but there is something more to be figured out, looming above, and waiting for me to discover why the wash of red lingers throughout my lifetime. 
I can see all the mothers before me are indeterminate in the textures of my skin, and they call out from within my bones. They seep out, into subconscious action and dream. It renders dark and confined, but I know it is warm and it is comforting. 
There is light to follow, my mother speaks to that. I’m on my way there, and I can feel it gushing against my bare flesh. 

Thick, the darker is shaken onto my canvas. And it comes in waves. 
It grazes on the surface of my skin, and I’m swept aside. 
I think I’m changing form. 
From the ends of hardened tubes, my pieces are barely perceivable, it sticks to me green and I’m covered in it. I wish I could see myself with the eyes of a child, no preconception of why I’m looking the way I do. The brush pierces right through my stomach, splitting me into opposing reds and aching blues, green no longer, the two kinds layered beneath each other, exposing and confining one another. Mixed right there on the surface, filling in the blank spaces, I can see me coming together now. 

I'm stitched, a needle slowly threading through hands and toes. 
But the holes are gaping wide, like a window. Memory and history attached. I wonder then, 

what creates the frame to hold it all together? 

All of it giant, bigger than me. 

I ask, ‘am I washed blue or am I created yellow?’ I hope to be made of all three primary colours, mixed. It doesn’t reflect what I thought I looked like, but much more than the spectrum of colours, mixed. 
I need to let go, and to wash along the shore like an evaporating wave. But I reach, digging into formless sand. 
I’m yet to take shape, laying restlessly along the stretch of yellow. I have no way to tread into the earth. 
I’m clawing at thick fabric. The many versions, flattening me. Pinned to a wall stretched tight the white glistening teeth on display today. 

I can see, unrealistically, it comes from a place of love. Molding the hundreds of versions before coming to the one it is today. It will inevitably morph again. 
I dissolve. 
Unrecognisably, it’s more woman than ever, disparaged from the figure and clothed in unfitting layers. I put them up on a pedestal, stark and bright, dressing up, cloth and cover. I’ve sewn pieces together to only outgrow the one I thought I completed. And I still wonder, ‘which is the truest colour?’ 
I’ve dissolved. 

With a draped sea of red closeting true feminine form, just a curtain between me and the person I thought I could see, buried so deep, I wonder if I can become fully formed. 
I’m relieving from the wall. 
I want to see it all, one part of me dried perfectly and concealing the forgotten parts, another from each person before me, glistening like ripples in water, folding over each wrinkle and pore. 

I’m going to slather myself with blank spaces and see if it sticks, because I’m tired of the dull pale blues and the ache of harsh strokes. 
I’ll display my mismatched patches, and the stains of previous workings. 
The stage lights bright will hold me closed and you’ll see each stitch and stroke. 
I’ll twist and turn, curtseying into a form that is quite truly woman. Even between the white red black gaps, blue yellow windows and green undertones, it feels like me up there. 
In a warm embrace, I’m tender and rooted into the ground. I’m carefully washed against the green. I’m created new, and sure of who I am unseen. 

Relief is a creative response to Karen Black’s artworks titled After the rain comes the sun and Messy tangle (2022), which were both featured in MAMA’s exhibition Thresholds, Feb. - Oct. 2024.