“Everything Changes, Everything Dies"
{Furniture & Items Installation with Oils, Acrylic, and Embroidered Paintings}
If we look closely enough, everything bears the mark of its existence, and its story on Earth. In Phoenix, in 2017, age 44, I decided to start art classes and start imputing the identity of ‘artist’ on myself. I was excited and wanted to paint for the rest of my life. I had so much catching up to do. I then painted the Salt Lamp painting, as well as the Peace Lily triptych. Painting and drawing my plants and flowers became one of my favorite passions. At that time, I had about 30 house plants. The Sunflowers in the Vase I started embroidering in 2020, but after I became sick, it sat in a carrier bag for three years, hoping one day I’d be well enough to get back to it. In fact, I actually sold my art easel to help pay my medical bills. I really thought I would never be well enough again to do ‘art’.
My recent sickness started at the end of 2020. It took 9 months to discover we had carbon monoxide and gas poisoning. I was so ill, I hadn’t noticed my plants were struggling too. I thought I was just unable to take care of them as well as I used to. I had no idea they were dying too due to there being less oxygen in the house.
The peace lily almost didn’t make it and went down to brown leaved little stumps. The other plant turned brown and kept losing its leaves.
Within a month of the furnace being fixed in late 2021, new shoots appeared on some of the plants as they started to breathe once again (see photo). This is it today, three years later. It’s hard to believe that this now green peace lily almost died. But, like me, it came back to life and didn’t give up on living. The plant on the right shows the brunt of the ‘brown dying’ period and then the new growth that sprouted in more recent years. These are the only two plants that are still around, out of approximately 30 plants.
The Sunflowers, I could finally get back to and finished working on it in 2023.
The peace lily still has a few brown ends, a reminder to me that I am not completely healed.
‘Life’ is full of impermanence and change. We gather things together to make a life. Eventually they will all disperse. We even have mini lives within our one ‘life’. Even these temporary lives that we build transmute and transform. The scene you see before you is all that is left of the items that were ‘together’ in 2017 for my living room drawing (turquoise blue cabinet, draws, etc.). Only this one plant in this scene – the peace lily on the bottom left survived. I’ve assembled the items that survived and added my previous art to the scene.
When I look at my paintings, and when I look at my plants, they remind me though that even though things change, I am still alive and that I have been given a chance to thrive once again.
How many things in your house can tell your story? How many things in your house have witnessed your mini deaths? How many living things in your house have died alongside you? How many things in your house have witnessed your living?
Never underestimate that they are walking the journey with you.
Is this why as humans, we cling so much to items?
Both our own and those of the ones who are gone?