Recovery

"Ominous" by Hilary J. England, 11" x 14" oil on canvas, 2016

It's been a long and horrible month.  I'm going to get very personal here since this is a very personal painting.  I suppose I could just let you all "wonder" at the story behind it, or where it originated from.  Did I go scope out some strange little child alone and naked on a lakeshore, and start painting her?. LOL, no.  This painting is just my personal "story" of the situation I am dealing with. My Dad nearly died after a bout of pneumonia this month, and the toll of that episode wiped me out more than I realized or anticipated.  I couldn't eat, I couldn't sleep, I couldn't relax or concentrate, and the days just slipped by with me not realizing anything at all, just feeling like crap, and there being zero I could do to correct it, or move through it. Dad's still fighting to recover, and for that I am grateful, but the anguish of watching his suffering had really left me in a deep depression.

I painted this little painting today, to try and move through this funk I'm in.  I realized that Dad's illness stripped away everything in my life, to when I was a little child, and I was terrified of the unknown. I remember standing on the age of a lake, looking at the water, feeling anxious and afraid, not knowing what was in there and if it would swallow me up.

So, here was my psychological therapy for the day.  I don't usually do paintings "from my head", but this one was different, because I really needed to try and work out all of the struggles I was dealing with, and this helped me.  Didn't "fix" everything, but it helped.

~Enjoy.