All the things I think about myself now, plus painting.
Whilst editing my website I came across this text from three years ago. Here are my reflections on my work during that period, and my perspective three years on.
Right now, I am lying in my childhood bed at home, in exactly the way I would have been after my surgery back in December of 2021. After three years of reflection, I think it's interesting to document the emotional landscape I currently inhabit.
When I wrote about losing my ovary for the first time I was very angry. Disappointed by a system that was supposed to support me and frustrated. I can be impatient at times and to me, having a tumour felt really annoying. It was a waste of my best years and an inconvenience. I was young, hot, and about to meet loads of cool people at university. Instead of brimming with vibrant energy I looked pregnant.
Of course I was very concerned with my health, not just my appearance, but in general I felt bogged down. Heavy with the responsibility of sickness and feeling like a child who still wants someone to manage their doctors appointments. I felt wholly unrelatable, and really lonely. You can see all this in the text I wrote back in August 2022, when I was still in the thick of it. My thoughts and feelings regarding negligence in women's health, and the unjust-ness of what happened to me remain the same.
All that said, surprisingly, I feel grateful for the pain I experienced. People talk about ‘healing’ but that's not really how I think of it, It just feels like a right of passage that happened too early. Everyone gets sick eventually, and has the same realisations, nothing special - just premature. So now, mostly it just feels like something that happened three years ago.
When I think about not having my ovary, not having the round belly that held it as it grew, or the mass of tissue and fluid that I made, I feel funny. It gives me the sensation that I've just remembered I don't have braces anymore; my teeth feel naked. It's the genre of emotion where you forget what you came in the room for.
Sometimes, that eerie forgetfulness leaves me with a bad taste. It makes me feel different in my womanhood, It makes me feel haggard. I have a tiny misogynist in my mind telling me untruths. Saying I'm less virile so I'm less of a woman. And I have lots more fears… When might I have a baby? Who might I have it with? Will my body look like it did before? What if it returns? Should I freeze my eggs? Should I have kids before i'm 30? What if I can't have them? All strange things to consider from the age of 21. It makes me think about the speed at which life changes for me, and many of my friends. These years feel like Bambi on ice. Emerging as a young woman is something I thought I would do gracefully. I did not think I would spend so much time confused… Sometimes I wonder what matters to me when I paint, or when I listen to music. I think about the parts I admire and why I relate to them, then I wonder, what am I interested in besides myself? What persists? All I return to is change. Life is so transient, phases come one after another. I feel like a zoetrope, changing pictures all the time but spinning in a circle.
Losing my ovary was a big part of my life and so is painting. I dedicated a lot of time to combining my worlds with good and bad results. Now I would like to dedicate even more time to digesting that in words.
At first having a tumour gave my artwork some direction, albeit accidentally. Negligence in women's health had a big impact on my treatment, and the whole ordeal spilled into my paintings as a means to cope. My rudimentary symbolism makes me cringe looking back, but when I soften myself I can see how much I wanted to be listened to. The angry swords, horses and wombs were popular, with identity politics being so ‘in’ right now; I had a message and a sob story. It made me and my work more interesting and it was trendy. But… It was kind of depressing. Being cross all the time is quite hard to sustain and I felt like I was shoved into an activist role. I had cornered myself and I didn't even like my paintings. I didn't want to keep doing them! My focus had been on the internal world quite literally, organs and operations - but nothing about how it felt. I think I had an emotional growth spurt after surgery; so much has shifted within me.
As a person I think I enjoy change and the evolution of my health has certainly helped me embrace it. I do feel quite scared of feeling out of control still, in my paintings and in my life. Without my ovary I have become way more comfortable with change, and in the big tug of war I've had, trying to separate myself from my paintings, I have lost. Painting through my experience has taught me a lot, the way I see has changed forever, and what I think is important to paint about is different too. If I still had both my ovaries I think I might feel stuck, unable to break into my visceral body or express an internal landscape celebrating the confusion of girlhood and the joy I have experiencing it.
So it's been a blessing and a curse, a great relief and huge frustration. Without it, I don't think I would be very good at painting, or at least I'd still be quite bad, so I credit this pivotal experience for shifting my perspective, for challenging me and realigning my interests, for giving me a new way of seeing, and for shaping the emotional language that makes my paintings.
Images documenting the growth of my ovarian mass, from 2020-2021
