Cover Up Painting

This painting is a representation of my life, and the way in which it has been impacted by trauma. I began this painting with only the black line in mind, and below it I painted various shapes and colours, continually covering them up with more paint, more shapes, more colours, until the body of the painting was filled with a mess of hidden forms, sat beneath the heavy black line. The black line represents the difficult feelings I have dealt with for as long as I can remember, a dark cloud that looms over me and everything that happens in my life, acting as a sort of lid above me, limiting how high I can climb, how much light I can absorb. Everything beneath feels foggy and unclear. Difficult things happen and I try to cover them up. I try to scratch back through the paint to retain some outlines of my story. I am left with a sickly mess. And the black line is too thick to erase. But it appears to be shifting, perhaps moving away, slipping out of the painting. Some soft pink creeps past, suggesting a way up. I try to express the turbulent inevitable coexistence of pain and hope amongst the complex intricacies of life.