Painting: Freedom Goes Up in Flames

This is the first painting I completed in acrylics. It is titled "Freedom Goes Up in Flames" and yes, that is an airplane with flames. I have been surprised to hear the wide variety of interpretations people have come up when looking at it. There were some surprises and some reactions that I completely expected. I got a bigger kick out of hearing what they thought it meant than I did out of explaining what I intended it to symbolize.

So, as a little experiment, I want to hear your interpretations. Go ahead and go now to the comments, drop me a note and tell me what you see. I want to assure you that there are no right or wrong answers. Whatever you see, whether you are spot on or come up with something I had never considered, it is a valid opinion and I would be honored to hear it. Go on! Leave me a comment - don't make me beg! - then come back and read where my head was when I painted it...

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What I Meant:

Like I said, this is titled, "Freedom Goes Up in Flames" and it is the first painting I completed in the new acrylics. The important parts of this painting are the colors as each color corresponds to a specific emotional response I had during an incident at an airport.

BFF and Kid-5 took a cross-country vacation via airplane. They flew out from the airport that is a few hours from our house because of the drastic price difference. To that end, I got to play chauffeur and take them to the airport (and pick them up again 5 days later). The whole of the month before they left, BFF worried and stressed and fussed about the details of managing this trip across the country by herself with a 2 year old in tow. The entire week preceding the departure was filled with tension and anxiety and the actual morning that we left should have turned us both grey-haired and sent us into straight-jackets for life. We were late getting out, got lost on the way (stupid GPS sent us to the wrong place!) Finally we arrived at the airport, got checked in and headed to the security checkpoint.

As I watched them walk away, I felt my emotions swirling like a cloud of colors. This might be in part because I had just started painting and colors were in the front of my mind. As I paid attention to the emotions/colors, they seemed to settle into images so that I could paint them. And paint them I did...

First I felt this strange combo of worry (how would she handle Kid-5 all by herself on the planes?) and excitement (they are going to have so much fun!) It created that gray-green color of the grass and (pardon the pun) laid the groundwork for the whole thing.

So close on the heels of the worry/excitement that they seemed almost simultaneous, the relief washed over me. In my mind, this became a bright periwinkle. It became the sky in this painting, though I didn't quite capture the color - not purple enough to be truly periwinkle.

Following the relief, a sense of fatigue swirled through me. Not just fatigue, chronic fatigue, the kind that is ever-present and seems to stretch forward into eternity with the promise of never completely going away. This became the gray-tan road.

At this point, I could no longer see BFF and Kid-5; they had passed beyond my line of sight towards the gate. I turned around to go back into the high, open area of the terminal. We had been running late arriving and so had not had time to look around at all the shops and restaurants and the gorgeous view out the wall of glass. Curiosity bubbled up, a bright yellow feeling that swirled around itself and lit up my mood. Thus the sun found a place in my painting.

My eyes roamed the terminal, taking in all the sights. Movement outside the two-story glass window drew my attention. I watched a plan launch itself into the sky. As bright blue as Tom Bombadil's eyes, freedom launched itself into my consciousness and completely filled my thoughts. I was free. I didn't have to be anywhere or do anything. No kids were whining at me; no house scolded me in its need to be cleaned. The light on Mom's taxi read "OFF-DUTY" and my time and my energy were my own to command. The desire to jump on a plane and disappear overwhelmed me. I stood rooted in the terminal, wondering where I could go and which ticket counter to try first. I took a step towards the escalators to go buy a ticket with the image of a bright blue airplane lifting off settling onto the painting forming in my mind.

I didn't even land that first step when reality struck. I couldn't get on a plane. I couldn't afford a plane ticket, let alone what came after it. And my time wasn't my own; the schedule, even with Kid-5 off my books, remained packed. I had obligations, responsibilities, commitments. A weighty shadow settled over me, killing the sudden emotional high I had just experienced. This became the shadow on the ground: I was tethered to the ground - not free at all. It became the jetwash behind the plane: this shadow follows me no matter where I go.

As my mood crashed with the realization that the freedom I briefly deluded myself into thinking I had was, in fact, a delusion, other emotions joined the color-swirl. I felt angry, resentful, frustrated and disappointed that my idea had crashed and burned. The negative feelings threatened to consume me as the flames threaten the plane.

My freedom had gone up in flames.

A few things to note about this painting. First, and most important, is that despite being engulfed in flames and representing an experience that ended negatively, the plane is still flying UP. It isn't plummeting to the ground. This is the stubborn streak of optimism that can be found in even the most depressing of my pieces. It is also representative of the fact that, if I had truly wanted to, I could have possessed that freedom. I could have gone to the ticket counter and purchased a ticket to somewhere, gotten onto a plane and taken off without notice or planning or forethought. Despite the shadowy weights, I could still have forced my freedom.

Another thing about it: this was my first attempt at mixing acrylic colors. Thought I wasn't able to reproduce two of the colors from my head onto the canvas, most of the colors I ended up with worked alright. In fact, given my lack of experience (let alone instruction) in visual art, I am pretty proud of this painting. No one questioned what I had depicted: an airplane taking off into a blue sky, consumed with flames, its shadow cast on the grass below and leaving a trail behind it. Interpretations varied wildly (and fascinating to listen to!) but the objects themselves were not called into doubt.

How and Why I Paint

I think I mentioned that I have started painting. It feels strange to me that now, at 30-mumblemumble, I am taking up painting, an endeavor that I have never really contemplated before. But now that I've started, I love it! Like most of my writing, I don't do it for others. I am not really interested in becoming a world-renowned artist. I don't care if my paintings look like they were done by a hyperactive three year old. I don't paint to practice or improve my technique. Painting is, for me, a form of therapy. I really wish I knew more about art therapy so I could maximize the potential of this newfound passion. Eventually I will find a resource to do this but for now, I paint things that mean something to me.

Truth be told, I started painting as a self-defense mechanism. The fact is, I am a cutter. Yes, there it is, admitted out loud on a public medium. Go ahead and judge me; I don't care what someone reading this thinks. Okay, I do care what people think but not enough to not put this "out there". Here it is again: I am a cutter. I cut and burn when I reach a certain threshold of stress, anger, or pain. I've done a lot of reading about people who do this paradoxical behavior. Turns out there are a lot of people who engage in self-harm behaviors and there are plenty of reasons they do it.

General Info on Self-Harm

The most prevalent seems to be a desire to feel something, anything, like it affirms that they are still alive despite feeling detached and disconnected from everything around them. Another extremely common effect, and this typically overlaps with the prior one, is a sense of release. All those emotions pile up in a person, creating this unbearable pressure. Cutting (or other self-harm behaviors) generates a release of this pressure, an outlet for the storm of feelings inside them. For some, causing tangible physical harm to themselves can actually be a way of avoiding committing suicide. There is also the matter of the body's physiological response to injury, such the release of natural chemicals that function as pain killers and heightened awareness of their surroundings.

Cutters can get trapped in a psychological cycle that has been likened to (and debatably even labeled as) addictive. The psychological pain and pressure build up in the person until they start to numb everything around them yet feel as if they are going to explode and evaporate into the ethereal. To relieve the pressure and reassure themselves that they are still alive and are still human, they self-harm. With the self-harm comes a powerful emotional and physical release, like taking a deep breath after being submerged in water a little too long. In the moment, the body pumps chemicals, the mind can relax, and the pain is transformed from a shadow on their soul to a more external, tangible injury. In the moment, their equilibrium feels restored. The problem here is that The Moment doesn't last. Like a drug fix, the high subsides and the cycle renews, often exacerbated by additional feelings of guilt, shame, fear, anger and other reactions directly related to taking action on the self-harm urges. So the pressure builds, the numbness settles, and off they go again. There is a very real reason for likening it to an addiction.

From what I have read, this type of cutter is the most common. Self-harm may also be triggered by a desire for attention (Look! I'm different, special, because I do this thing that is "x-treme"!), an attempt to manipulate others (If you leave me, I will do something drastic and it will be all your fault!), a desire to punish themselves (I deserve the pain this will cause me because I am bad.), as a cry for help (Look how badly I'm hurting. I can't tell you so please notice me and help me.), a need to create a tangible representation of psychological pain (I hurt so much on the inside; I want my outsides to match my insides.), or even to relieve boredom (Nothing is giving me that adrenaline rush anymore; maybe this will.). Frequently these reasons overlap, exist together, and may even be subconscious – they don't know why they do it; they just do.

Okay, now that the psychology lesson is over… lol

Surprise, surprise, I am not one of the majority. I don't cut to feel and I don't get that rush of release from it. When I cut or burn, it is more along the lines of either punishment or the tangible representation. Sometimes there is an element of the cry for help but as it is almost always completely overruled by fear of discovery, I don't normally rank that as a primary motivation. My cutting and burning also tends to be symbolic, a letter or shape that speaks to me of larger, painful concepts. While I don't experience the addictive cycle that many cutters have, once I reach a certain stress/pain threshold, the self-harm urges grow until I feel I must express them or I will lose whatever tenuous grip of reality that I have left.

Easter through mid-June every year are incredibly rough for me. Sixteen years ago I made some bad choices that haunt me still. Every year I drag myself through a vicious emotional hurricane. Last year, for the first time in about 5 years, I managed to stay out of the hospital. I still messed up my arm pretty bad, but at least I stayed out of the hospital. This year, I wanted to do better.

Why I Paint

During a brainstorming session with my Guardian Angel, the idea of painting came up. The part of me that houses the self-destructive urges from this time of year latched onto the idea. I would be able to express those feelings on paper, in much more detail that I can show with an exacto-knife on my arm. The promise of a larger canvas and wider range of colors on my palette appealed to me. My Guardian Angel arranged for me to have the supplies I would need to get started. Immediately, images of things I wanted to paint began to swirl in my mind's eye.

The next day, too impatient to wait for the acrylic paints and brushes, I commandeered some of my kids' paints and I poured out my first picture. All about texture and color, it held more passion than I could have imagined. I'm most likely not going to post that picture. It's more direct and specific and lays bare the nature of the mistakes I made all those years ago. I have a hard enough time looking directly at that issue on my own without blasting it into the open world. Suffice to say that each color was important; the colors mixed to create each shade meant something. The texture of each area held meaning. And when I was done, I felt pride and excitement at the statement I had made, not ashamed and guilty.

The next day, the acrylics arrived. Paints and brushes, canvases and an easel… all at my disposal, for my creative energies, to change the raging emotions inside me into something visual, tangible, and self-affirming rather than self-destructive. Since then I have completed 5 more pictures. I am going to try to share those, as well as any others that come along whenever possible. Just to make myself clear, though: I'm not painting to perfect technique or to be able to reproduce a landscape or a person. Light and shadows especially escape me. And I am fine with that. I paint for the meaning behind the paintings. It's cool when people can tell what it is I painted because it looks like the item, but if they can't, it's still not my priority to "fix" my technique to please others. I paint, like I write, for me.

I don't know what you call it for paintings – in writing it is a copyright. Whatever it's called, all of my paintings I share are mine. Please don't save or repost them without permission. And certainly don't give credit for them to someone else.