Artist Statement - Inner Pain's Outer Portrayal

Abigayle Goldstein

11/16/17

Painting 1

Zimmer

This oil on canvas painting entitled Inner Pain’s Outer Portrayal is inspired by some of Frida Kahlo’s mirror image portraits and split images landscapes. The left side incorporates dull cool colors - white, blue, and sienna tones - in the representation of a hospital room. The dull cool colors are meant to represent a kind of monotone hopelessness that comes with an illness that is not being treated or understood. The right side incorporates vibrant warm colors - pink, green, yellow, etc. - in the representation of a landscape with mountains, valleys, and sky. The vibrant warm colors are meant to represent the possibility of happiness and wellness when a body is whole. A black line down the middle splits the two sides from each other, but two figures of the painter - on on each side of the canvas - reach out to each other and catch hands in the middle of the canvas. Both figures are nude, but the figure on the left is crying and has multiple bright red lines striking out parts of her body where pain is experienced but not seen. The figure on the right is whole. The process of the painting was an underpainting that established the dark divide between the two sides of the canvas, a second color underpainting that established the colors necessary to convey emotion, and a final colored painting that established all the necessary details of the landscape, hospital room, and nude figures.

This painting was specifically inspired by Frida Kahlo’s desire to show her inner pain and injury on the outside of her body in an attempt to show others what she was feeling but that was invisible. This resonated with me because I am currently in the process of trying to get a diagnosis for an invisible disease that I have been living with for two years now. Because my illness can’t be seen, it’s hard for people, including doctors, to understand or care about how I am feeling. I have been exploring multiple methods of portrayal to open eyes to the kind of pain and illness I experience on the inside but that is not on the outside of my body of my attitude. I chose to use the mirror images because I didn’t want the painting to dwell on the hopelessness of illness, but to offer a vision of opportunity and hope for the future, which is why the two figures hold hands to create a link across the divide. For me, this is a direct representation of the story of the kinds of emotions and struggles I’m currently experiencing, how I hope I will someday feel about my body and health, and how I profoundly related to Frida Kahlo.

Finally, inspired by the class trip to the Frida Kahlo exhibit and the process of painting, I also wrote a poem for an advanced poetry class I’m taking this semester that I will include here:

INNER PAIN’S OUTER PORTRAYAL

For Frida Kahlo and Natalie Scenters-Zapico

Image one: sunflowers, their petals

wilting with every passing day.

Image two: piles of panty liner

wrappers and stained underwear.

Image three: hot and damp and then -

Image four: blotches blooming like

roses across numb white toes.

Image five: matching red marks from

pressure - elbows and thighs.

Image six: a turquoise and white rosary.

Image seven: mirror reflections reveal

no evidence in a bush of unkempt curls.

Image eight: bruised knees on either

side of a swirling drain.

Image nine: water drips in the dark

off of beads and the arms of a plastic cross.

Image ten: fingers - frantic - search skin for answers.

Image eleven: tears and water and water -

indistinguishable in copper pipes.

Image twelve: wet hair drips onto soft clean

clothing hiding nothing at all to hide.