Where Do You Hide Your Anger?
What Has Been Brought From the Garden?
"What Has Been Brought From the Garden" is my latest collection of artwork. This collection of paintings is inspired by my painting and poem, "My Rage is Like a Flower Garden", that I wrote in the heat of the locked-down summer of 2020.
The focus of this collection was to explore the theme of feminine rage, creating work that was floral and feminine in color palette, but rage-filled in expression and intensity. This collection consists of large, attention-grabbing paintings that cannot be ignored because of their size.
In reflecting on my 2020 painting and poem, I wondered, "if my rage is like a flower garden, what have I harvested from it?" The paintings and accompanying writings are the answer to that question.
Several years of my life were spent concealing and denying my anger, and I gained nothing. A lot of this was because, as a woman in the south, I was taught to be polite, to be a “yes girl”, to be what Gillian Flynn describes as a “cool girl” in her book Gone Girl.
The day that I painted “My Rage is Like a Flower Garden” I learned to be in relationship to my anger. I listened to the rhythms of my anger, I studied its substance, and I found the information and energy it contained.
In the time since, I have worked to know the strengths and limitations of my anger and how it is presented.
And now I use painting to express my anger and that is where I have found growth.
Where Do You Hide Your Anger?
Where do you hide your anger?
Do you take the heart of her fury
And in a boiling bath
Bottle it, can it, and seal it
Inside of a glass ball jar?
Do you place her heart
High up on a too cluttered shelf,
Under a thick layer of dust,
With the promise that one day
Her purpose will come?
What do you say to your anger?
Do you fill her ears with venom when
With a slip of her unpracticed tongue,
She cuts the unintended
And gets splashed with their blood?
Do you sew her mouth shut,
And shame her for coming undone,
Sending her to her room alone
To do laundry
And think about what she’s done?
What if you loved your anger?
What if you gave her a place to play
To run, to scream, to jump, to rage,
And, when she was ready,
Walked her home for the night?
What if you loved your anger?
Fed her, bathed her, clothed her, rocked her,
And at bedtime spoke to her in
Whispers as sweet as milk and honey?
What if you loved your anger,
Holding her hand in the dark
Tracing the veins in her wrists
To the source of her heart?
If you want to stay up to date on the progress of this collection and be part of the private viewing when it happens, you can join the Collectors Club here!