Arting after a heart attack

In December of 2017, I was living life. I was in the beginning stages of building up my work as an artist. My website was up, and I had even started a newsletter and sent out some posts. And then I had a heart attack. My world was shaken. One of my trauma responses was to delete all my work. The website? Gone. Social media? Gone.

So I’ve started rebuilding.

My first painting after my heart attack took me almost a year to the day to finish. That’s actually not uncommon for me. What is uncommon for this painting is its style. You know in art school I learned about how people’s art styles can change after major life experiences. The heart attack was certainly a major life experience.

It has been almost three years now, and I have found that my art both has changed, and it hasn’t. The style of Ignited Bomb is notably different from my other paintings. I was processing my trauma, and that is what came out. The style of my paintings of late are familiar; they are a lot like how I painted back in my teens.

(Though I’d like to think I have better technique now…)

I think it’s interesting that my technique has “regressed” like this, and there’s probably some deeper meaning in that which I definitely should explore.

In the meantime, if you want to hear more about my painting, and a little bit of the story of my trip to the hospital, watch the video. I don’t think I’m ready to type the whole story out yet.