Art has become a platform for me to express my emotions about avoided subject matter, like mental health. This visual representation of a distorted reality can trigger interacting perspectives. With the art and community combination, I am hoping to make individuals feel more comfortable to handle their pain and embrace healthy lifestyle choices. These paintings are part of the DePerson series focusing on a mental disorder called Depersonalization.  It is a form of dissociation leading to an individual’s “subjective state of feeling estranged, detached, or disconnected from their own being.”  People suffering from this disorder are hesitant to tell anyone, including doctors, for fear their symptoms are not believable.  There are out-of-body experiences causing the inability to control his or her own thoughts and movements. It is one of the many ways the brain can protect itself from emotional pain too difficult to embrace caused by extreme stress, depression, or panic.

 

Within the paintings, I decided to overlap an individual with aerial views of themselves to imitate the out-of-body experiences. I included the out-of-focus television to simulate the static and disconnect the person is feeling. Elaborating the television screen along with the overlapping figures is to demonstrate more effectively the feeling as if they are watching oneself from a distance. With symptoms of this description, it is understandable for people to keep it hidden from the public. Unfortunately, it often leads to not dealing with the trauma lying underneath. My hope for this series is to create empathy and bring awareness to the commonality of others suffering from its many varieties