Write what you know...

So - 2 hours later, here I am - sweaty, covered and graphite and have a stiff neck from leaning over my studio table. I've been reading a book about the Hmong; refugees from Laos that came to the US in large numbers in the 1980's, mostly to California. It is called "The Spirit Catches You And You Fall Down" by Anne Fadiman. Anyway, in the first chapter she refers to a Hmong folktale about a shaman who flies a horse over the twelve mountains that divide the earth and the sky so that he/she can ask the spirits to send a child to a couple.

Kevin and I have been trying to get pregnant (I've been trying for over two years now), and it is pretty much the major thing on my mind at any hour of the day or night. I'm almost done with the book, but that passage from the first chapter keeps showing up in my mind's eye, so I did a very folksy interpretation of it just now - concentric circles of mountains and little couples, the sun and rain pouring down on them, and little streams in the valleys... wish I could post a picture here, but I still haven't figured out how. Anyway. There is another story in the book that dreaming about having a snake in your lap means that you will be pregnant soon, and I've been thinking about that too, but not for this piece.

I've got another idea (which predates my reading PamDora's blog, btw) of doing a piece about EPTs - a MAJOR closeup of the data spots and filmy ovarian and blastular shapes in the background. Trying to have a baby is the biggest thing in my mind, so it just seems fitting that it should start showing up in my art.

This Hmong folktale piece is very innocent in feeling, but I keep seeing sort of it's evil twin too - rivers of blood for when I get my period, and the rain is my tears; the sun beating down is the ultrasound rays and chemicals pouring into my body to try and make it ovulate, and the sun is the Reproductive Endocrinologist that I must obey as if she were God in my world of Assisted Reproductive Technology. At least my partner is still at my side in all of my pictures now, and if anything was going to be a constant in this seemingly interminable journey, I'm glad its him.

Needless to say, I think this is a theme that will be showing up more and more in my work if I let myself really put myself on the canvas, rather than just trying to please the public eye. I'm glad that I'm starting out with a sweet story though... especially since I'd love to believe in happy endings.