“You’ll be able to look back and see you are able to get through things even if it’s really rough.”

This painting marks a threshold moment for my son, as he began his transition to adolescence. He dyed his hair blue (a sign of independence) and told me not to read to him anymore at bedtime, preferring to do it himself. So it’s also about me learning to let go. Mourning the loss of his childhood.

A single incandescent bulb seemed to spotlight all of this for me. (A second meaning of incandescent is “full of emotions,” which I was). The warm light drew out the earth tones of his skin. His orange, determined face became mottled. A slightly foreshortened composition makes his purpleish limbs seem to grow right in front of my eyes. Contrasting everything in shadow which seems to lose its color, like childhood becoming memories.

At the time we were also learning to cope with his recent OCD diagnosis, and I wondered what other challenges lie ahead for him. This little space of warmth feels so cozy and safe, yet everything outside of it was unknown and dark. I realized I couldn’t protect him anymore. I never could, really.

My dad saw this moment where he didn’t need to read to me anymore. And with other things going on in my life too, in a moment where I was having a lot of difficulty with other things in my life, this felt kind of like capturing a turning point where I was able to take control of things.

I was younger and everyone was just trying stuff. It was a product that you could put in your hair that would like move it, but it would also be dyed for a few days and would wash out in the shower. So that was me trying new things and changing what I look like.

The blanket’s pretty detailed and I remember getting that. I think that was another change for me. Like I was growing up and getting a mature bed set. So this was my mattress sitting on the ground before I got my new bed frame with the comforter. So it wasn’t like kid’s… I don’t know what I think I had like Star Wars or…. I think in that point I was starting to change and you know, that’s symbolizing something for me.

I don’t remember what the actual book was, but my dad put, what is it? “Managing Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.” I think that goes along with what I was dealing with in the moment. I guess that’s calling to what you can’t see. So I look here like I’m reading a book and you know, I feel like I’m able to like read now and do all this stuff and I’m changing with my hair and all this, but that’s like the section you can’t see.

I’ve learned a lot from that situation and that time period. I’m going through other changes now, like going to college, new experiences with that, and it’s, you know, not smooth, but I can learn things from that and be able to get through stuff now.

I could tell anybody that’s younger, but I think anybody really that’s in a changing point in their life, I think I would talk about going through change. Being able to look back at that and see that you are able to get through things even if it’s really rough.

My name is Emmett Dorsey and I feel excited for you to look at my portrait.

For me it represents this sense that maybe we think we are directing ourselves, that we’re in charge and behind the wheel, but then coming to realize that we’re being carried somewhere.

The older I get, the more I go through life and have this journey along this spiral of this path that we’re here for as people, the more I recognize the ways in which we aren’t here alone in any kind of way. There’s something deeply beautiful and grounding about that, because we are in a time when there’s so much separation.

From the time that this painting was created I have had a shift in my own… I don’t know if confidence is the word exactly, but it’s a kind of a confidence in the capacity to stay with the challenges of my life. Since this painting was made there were a lot of things that happened in my family life, my professional life, and relationship and personal life that really necessitated that I was fully here. Understanding that we are here by no accident. And we are here to be here. And sometimes we go through painful challenges to really bring that home. Because there is also beauty in that: staying with what is difficult.

In working with the ancestors, especially the grandmothers, I see them as the ones who hold the weave around us, and that they are weavers and they are holding a shawl around us children. And I’m thinking about the shawl of protection and the shawl of blessing and the shawl of care.

That cape I’m wearing is from Ireland. It’s from a Weaver family in Ireland, and so having a shawl is a relationship in a direct way to those women who weave, and very much thinking of that as an ancestral thing. I find myself in shawls a lot these days. On the Imbolc night, it’s the last night of January going into the first of February, it’s known as Bridget’s time, when we leave out the shawls at night. And the tradition is that Bridget flies through the night and brings her blessing to the shawls. And so in the morning they’re covered with the dew that carries that, and you use that shawl for medicine work through the year.

My name is Denise. I feel honored and blessed by you seeing this portrait of me.