A Recovery Blog

This blog is about my continuing recovery from severe mental illness and addiction. I celebrate this recovery by continuing to write, by sharing my music and artwork and by exploring Buddhist and 12 Step ideas and concepts. I claim that the yin/yang symbol is representative of all of us because I have found that even in the midst of acute psychosis there is still sense, method and even a kind of balance. We are more resilient than we think. We can cross beyond the edge of the sane world and return to tell the tale. A deeper kind of balance takes hold when we get honest, when we reach out for help, when we tell our stories.

Sunday, September 21, 2008

The Displaced



This is a watercolor painting based on a photograph taken from a recent Time magazine article on Pakistan. The caption to the photograph reads: "Collateral damage -- Air strikes against militants in the tribal areas caused 260,000 to flee; many ended up in shelters like this one near Peshawar." It's an image of men and male (as far as I can tell) children. A father holds his child; the child has a swollen eyelid. The father looks concerned and is talking to someone near the photographer. The little child looks directly into the camera. There's pathos in this picture with the father flanked by children on either side of him while the older men hang back and watch. This image stirred up feelings of sympathy in me for that father and especially for the children. What will happen to them?

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I looked at this painting liking every image because of the baby wondering why you had tackled all the people so well but not the baby. Untill I read the caption underneath about the picture that the baby had a saw eye. I really like this picture. Don't worry Kate these people will have a life of one sort or another.

JP

nancy said...

Kate,

What a powerful painting. I was so excited to see a new work by you. You have a great talent to capture the human spirit. Why not post this on Artid?

Nancy

Feminist Voice with Disabilities said...

Kate -

I love your artwork! I had no idea you were such a talented artist, though I did know you were a gifted writer with a beautiful way with words.
Congratulations on your new business! It sounds great. I loved this post as well.
I appreciate very much that you read my blog as often as you do and leave informative, thoughtful, helpful comments. I am not so sure about Wellsphere, either, as I don't like the way they upload posts I wrote three years ago and list them with the current date, as if I just wrote them this week. I'm not sure if that's a glitch they'll eventually fix or what. I am happy to see you're on there too, though, and maybe we will both pick up some readers from that site.

Thanks for your input!

Take care,
Jen/Beautiful Mind

Cherie/ Butterfly Dreamer said...

Beautiful work...