“…the time before this project and what was emerging at the end—a period of suffering through to a period of healing.”

After completing the eleventh painting in this series, I received the image of “snow.” I considered making a black and white painting. I had a person in mind to be the subject, and she agreed. But the snow and our schedules never aligned.

Then in the spring of the following year, I tore my ACL playing soccer, again—the left leg this time. Immediately, rather than pain or surgery or rehabilitation, my first thought was, “It’s me. The twelfth painting is a self-portrait!”

Since all the other paintings were painted between the time of my two ACL tears, I felt this painting could be a link in a circle rather than part of a chronological line. I used my injuries as inspiration for, and the subject of, this painting. And just as I saw myself reflected in each of the other portraits, I included elements from each of the other paintings in mine. This emphasizes their relationship.

A note about the poem on the ice: as I painted, the song Insomnia by Caroline Polachak kept repeating. A lyric seemed to fit the painting: “Come blue, come grey, come waves that break.” The words I painted in the ice felt like a message from deep within.

This was a real full circle moment for me. It’s a painting that’s split in half, right? And it’s me. But I am not split in half. I was thinking about the Whole of myself, but these parts, two distinct parts. The reason I ended up painting this is because it felt like part of me where I was before this project, and this new part of me that was emerging at the end of the project.

The section on the left with me in the water was when I tore my ACL in my right knee. That was the moment that I started sitting. I was healing for nine months. And for the first third of that, I couldn’t even really get out of bed very well. The right side of this painting, the winter scene where I’m walking on the lake—it’s a frozen lake—shows when I tore my ACL in my left knee.

It’s not a beginning or an end, but it’s this hinge. If you imagine the paintings all in a circle, when I look at this painting, the section to the left is the beginning of the circle, and then you move left all the way around the circle, all these other paintings were painted, and then you come back to this painting at the end on the right. This painting could be like a keystone painting that is the hinge to the other eleven.

I realized when I was healing, I was walking on ice out on the same lake that I had been swimming in, several years before in the summer when I found out I tore my ACL. So it’s not only the before and the after, but it’s the moment I found out I tore my ACL on the left and my right leg—it’s before I got it fixed.

And then the moment pictured on the right when I tore my ACL on my left leg was after the surgery. So there’s also this story between the time of healing—the moment we know something’s happening and maybe it’s painful or it’s like a period of suffering—through to a period of healing.

I was realizing about myself and my own personal transformation during this period of physical suffering and healing, that there was transformation happening spiritually. And I started to recognize elements of that in all these other paintings.

I didn’t know I was even gonna make this painting. When I started this project, I never knew that I would be showing it publicly like this. As I really started getting into meditation and spending more time in my inner life, while I was healing my knee and my outer life, I started to receive, you know, like “I should paint.” Well, what do I paint? I was having this little inner dialogue. So this two-sided part of me also represents this dialogue that was going on this whole project long. And one of the things that I got was, “Paint people.” And, “Who do I paint?” “People you know. People you don’t know.” All these things resulted in these twelve paintings.

There’s also this story between the moment we know something’s happening, and it maybe it’s painful or it’s a period of suffering, through to a period of healing. I was realizing about myself and my own personal transformation during this period of suffering and healing—like physical—that there was transformation happening, or maybe transcendence really, spiritually. And I started to recognize elements of that in all these other paintings. “Oh yeah, that’s what I was painting!” Like it was like this big a-ha moment. Because I wasn’t really sure why I was making a lot of these other paintings. I just was painting.

This is a self-portrait that represents a lot for me, and gets at parts of who I am and who I’ve become over the last six years in ways that it’s hard to talk about. Not hard to talk about because I don’t want to, but there aren’t words for it. I think that’s why I come back to art making and painting, because it is really a spiritual thing.

This painting reflects all the other paintings. All the other paintings were painted during the time I made this painting. So when I decided to make it and was figuring out how I wanted to lay it out and what it would look like, I realized it was two parts of me. Looking at all the other paintings and experiencing all the other encounters that I had with those people, every time I was painting one of the other portraits, there came a time when I just stopped. Like literally I felt I had to just stop. And it was like I was starting to see myself. It was like I was painting a self-portrait.

It was weird. You know when you’re looking in a window or shop, and you’re looking at something that’s in the window, and then at some point you see your own reflection? That happened painting after painting. And I started to realize that even though I was relating to a painting about Ashley, there was something that I felt Ashley represented, that I felt I could see in myself. And at times. it would move me to laughter. At times it would move me to tears. Oh, this is a real human experience here.

And so in this painting, I was very intentional to try to grab at least one element, sometimes more, of each of the other paintings. Just like I experienced seeing myself in every other painting, I wanted everyone else, all the other paintings, to also see themselves in this one.

I ended up writing a poem that became ultimately the name of this painting, which is “Seasons Change, but the Same Lake.” And the poem itself is about what I think I was experiencing with this impermanence of self and this change, transition, transformation.

My wish is that if you’re looking at this now that you can feel some of that energy. And that maybe it would invite you to be open to not having to figure it out, but just sit with it, you know, come back to it again and again, and be curious.