ELECTRIC STORM
A visual painting tour of my seizure experiences from the inside
In 2018, Susan Aldworth included me in her Out of the Blue Installation about Epilepsy in Newcastle, England. This gave me the courage to make paintings about my own seizure experience.

{Get Down} 16" x 20", oil. So much memory loss and hallucinations. These experiences are unsettling, and they remove my sense of, how to say it... perceived solidity. These seizures in the emotional processing part of my brain give me such an intensity of feeling, that at times life feels unbearably tragic and unyieldingly exquisite. Too, there's the physical aspect. One took me down yesterday. The after burn comes with its mean yearning- I paint and it is a comfort. Though the body is low, the spirit is fresh. It is as if being so busted in regular life, the sun of what is can shine through. And I can see it. I can see that love and care are endless lines in the stream of living-ness; they are anchors into eternity. I can see that circumstance is a petty thing! Real life is lined up with what is unchanging. Real Life is lined up with Big Good. (and itty bitty invisible good). And every living person deserves beauty. Why do we only do beauty in nice neighborhoods? Why are prisons such ugly crapholes? "Have you made bad decisions? We'd like to offer you isolation, contempt, ugliness, concrete, no nature, poor sleep, seizure-inducing lighting, and disrespect." We're all: "oh the last shall be first", then in deed we're like: yeah the last should stay last.

"Care", 12" x 12", oil. Steve reconnected with our friend in town. The friend relayed that he lost his son, once our neighbor, to an overdose. Steve shakes his head in sorrow. "Why do people turn to those drugs? Because they don't know! Because they are hopeless. They are victims of a careless society. They are victims of a care-less society. We have to do our work and honor the people that have died because they weren't given what they needed!"- says my dear husband. In my teacher training class, the consistent question posed is "What are the needs of the child to help them be successful?" We have to start asking this questions a whole ducking lot more. Last night I woke from a disturbing dream to find my waking vision like shattered stained glass. Oh God, I thought, and buried my head in the pillow. Ocular nerve, I guess. At the same time, the space sensation of my body was snapping from small to gigantic and back and forth each second. Alice in Wonderland on fast forward, ooph. I hugged my pillow and said sleep, sleep, sleep, and I did. Have you heard of the European company that makes color predictions for each year? After you pay their standard fee they will share their predictions with you so that your product can hit the current color pulse of the world. When I see new fashionable colors I wonder how they will affect people's moods and environments. I once saw a scarf in a store that was cream, burgundy, and neon green. I concluded immediately that whoever made that scarf had despaired of life. I shuddered at the thought of someone purchasing and wearing this relic of despair. Not that colors tell you everything, but they do say something.