Remains of the Day (by Erika Fullick-March 2009)

I walk through those doors,
Those large glass sometimes wooden gallery doors,
I breathe in,
The feelings I get when I sit down on the concrete are unlike any other,
Everything is left on the other side of those doors,
Every negative emotion is hidden away,
Somewhere in the dark sky outside,
Subtle mumbled sounds can be heard from the open space next door,
A slight sound of piano plays faintly,
Faintly enough to trigger tranquility.
As I sit here,
Indian style,
This is the only place I can feel alive,
My imagination soars,
As Neal’s paintings hang on the wall,
I sit in the corner and view the open space
From all the angles.
Destruction and raw emotion
Reside in his paintings,
They beckon for your attention.
Brightly colored,
And highly saturated,
With textures falling off the canvas,
I wait and take it all in,
The lights from above,
Rest on my skin,
As if I am a piece of this place.
Tangled webs of pen on paper
Hang in black frames,
Those are my favorite,
Every color possible resting
In scribbles on scrap paper.
I feel like I blend in,
As if I am supposed to be here,
As if I am invited to sit on display as well,
The canvases are large and slightly overwhelming,
It is here that I find
Peace.

Peace of mind,
A time to clear my thoughts,
A moment to stare,
As if the seconds aren’t flying by.
All the panic of the past few days,
Are gone.
My heart is still,
No longer racing to keep up
With the outside world.
I can breathe
And not feel constricted,
I can be inspired by the smallest of things.

I drag out my easel,
And some newsprint,
And channel every bit of the negativity surrounding me,
Ebony in hand, I draw loosely,
The lines before me take on contours.
Contours of a figure,
Believed to be a woman.
This is the best
And most free I have been in the past weeks.
I am noticed by those wandering,
In and out of those doors,
Back out into the night sky,
Where all the emotions hide.
Go ahead and leave,
Instead of sit,
And deal with everything
You suppress.

On the other hand,
I will do whatever it takes
To get it out.
To stop the worry,
The pain, and anxiety.
I will deal with it,
For all to see.
I have now become,
A part of this gallery.
And as I take a few steps back,
I look at the lines,
That I have blindly drawn,
And I am proud.
Before me lies,
Everything inside,
On a piece of paper.
Nothing prohibiting me,
Nothing holding me back from feeling,
Alive.

Walking through those doors,
Have done great things for me.
Everyday when I walk in,
I am alive.
I am new.
I can breathe,
And channel everything around me,
Into something,
Worth feeling,
And appreciating.

 

The Beginning of an End

Here goes nothing. At this point in my life, when it comes to my art, I literally have nothing to lose. Honestly, creating projects is cheaper for me than therapy. Why pay for therapy, when you can quite literally vomit all feelings onto paper and hang it up as a spectacle. 

Spectacle. Think about it, being a spectacle is subjecting yourself to all sorts of criticism through that piece of paper that you just vomited on and hung up. Some WILL NOT get it. But that's because they just don't want to go there. They don't want to dig into the pits of their own soul and find sheer emptiness and wonder what to fill it with. They don't want to go to a place in their mind where they felt lonely or broken.