Death to Self

This piece was created for the annual art scholarship competition in 2005. The theme of the year was the word “quiddity.”



This is the original essay that was submitted with the piece.

This is the outpouring of everything I was before I got rid of it all. It is the visual expression of what was essentially my dying self. And it is all that is left of that death.
The image is not a representation of a tangible object. It is the representation of an event: moments of conflict within my soul.
It is the ‘quiddity’ of what happened in those moments. The essence of what went on in those thoughts… it is the image of when my self died. For a while it struggled and writhed in torment… but then it was gone – left in the past with only a drawing to attest to the struggle that had taken place. The image you see here was all that was left; as for me, I had nothing: no self to be, and I wandered empty for a few hours afterwards - an event forebode by the images I had drawn.
You can see the powerful struggle in the tormented structure of an eight-legged horse; the face of a crying girl tells of the attached human emotion; the struggle for life and death of ‘self’ is portrayed by haunting animals and interlocked details… and the rotting color of something alive being pulled away… away… looms and smokes all around it. And the hollow eyes show the fear of what will happen when the self is gone – it is the self’s fear of death.
I did not intend for it to turn out this way. I approached it with no idea or intention of what it would be when I was done. I hadn’t realized that my personal struggles would come out so strikingly on paper. And to be honest, it hurts to give up one’s self, and in exchange getting only a lack of what one thought one was... But the image is left to hang on the wall, a scar for my memory to hold on to. And I am very much alive for having let it go.

Free-hand Ink and Pastel on Paper, matted and framed: 24"x30" (61cmx76cm). $210 plus shipping when applicable.