ASCENSION

 "You never know how strong you are
 until being strong is your only choice." 

 - Bob Marley 

 Lori 
In January of 2017, my dear friend Lori died after an 8 year struggle with cancer. Lori fought bravely and for many years through chemo, remission, and then reoccurrence, she showed us all just how strong she was. Ultimately though, the end came and Lori was the first person I actually watched die. Each day I would visit, I wasn’t sure what to expect. Somedays she would be alert, sitting up, laughing, and I would think, “She’s going to get better.” Other days, she would seem confused or she would sleep most of my visit. On the day before she died, I visited her twice. At that point, she was sleeping all the time and when I would whisper in her ear, she would moan softly in response. Even though she was not awake physically, I knew she heard me and somehow that comforted me. Watching her die was almost surreal, like a dream or a movie. The difference is that when you watch a sad movie, you know the actors are just acting, but this was not a movie. Needless to say, her death affected me deeply.

 ASCENSION 

After she died, I found myself needing to work in my Studio to create art and think of Lori. Art therapy was something I had never done before but it seemed to ease my pain. The idea for ASCENSION came from my friend’s love of sunsets and so I wanted to have Lori being lifted up into heaven with ribbons during a beautiful sunset.

 How to - 

To begin, I modeled the sunset on my piece after a postcard of the sun setting over a body of water that a friend had given me. As you can see in the photo, I used reds and oranges on the water below the black land and gradually blended from red to orange to pink to purple at the top using acrylic paint. Also, on each color, I glued matching scraps of paper using matte medium (Liquitex) to give dimension. I used two StencilGirl stencils, “Repitition” with pink paint and “Random Squares” with purple paint.

To lighten the “black strip of land”, I added some washi tape and black stick-on letters. I painted over them with a coat of matte medium to make sure they stayed in place. I happened to have an orange heart in my stash and definitely glued that on.

Using a magazine photo as the template, I created and then cut the silhouette from white watercolor paper. The gold on the silhouette is from a napkin which I peeled apart and glued onto the silhouette with matte medium. So they would look realistic, I researched “ribbons” on Instagram. Originally, I had painted the ribbons gold, but that blended too much with the gold on her body, so I painted them copper (Liquitex Basics). When dry, I outlined them with a “1.6 mm Maxim” Staedtler pen. (Pay attention to the lines you draw and the ribbons will look realistic.)

“Where there is love, there is no darkness” and the small heart are both stamps from “Dina Wakley Media” (Stampers Anonymous).

This artwork was the first of four pieces of art made, (so far), using my own version of art therapy. 

If you’ve lost a loved one or are struggling with coping with an illness, why not make art to ease your pain? Good luck. I hope you’ve enjoyed this post and will join me every Tuesday and Friday for more blog posts at arteverydaystudio.blogspot.com.

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