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Description
This piece (and narrative below) are part of my final project for my figure drawing class this semester.

Approx. 3'x4'. Graphite, charcoal, and acrylic paint on wood panel.

For Mary Shelley

As I struggled through life, I found my parts left behind. An accident left me dismembered, a bad relationship took one of my organs, and every mistake I made shredded my skin and pulled at my limbs. Years passed, and I found myself a floating, faceless lump, decaying dutifully towards my inevitable death.

Or at least I thought it was so, until one day, when, suddenly and unexpectedly, I found my soul lifted from the bounds of both space and time. If you want to know what the outside of space-time looks like, it is like a hallway with no ends and an interior with no tangible ceiling or floor. It is both a place and a void. It is everything and nothing, always and never.

It was there that I reunited with my lost parts. I felt myself grow gigantic as we molded together in a mass of bile and clay. It was like god sculpting the earth out of water and dirt, except it was hideous. I instantly recoiled at it all—the monstrousness of my totality, the ugliness of my humanity, the deformity of my soul. The horrors of my past blasted through the corners of my brain like a rain of bombs. Finally, I knew my true form and my true face, and it was unbearable.

My immediate desire, of course, was death. But as I coiled, swelled, and molded within the void, I came to realize the truth. The truth was that I—yes, I—was everything. Everything—all of time and space, all of knowledge, experience, emotion, reality—everything I could ever know manifested in this indigestible, inhuman form. Once I obtained this truth, I realized that death was not a thing but a denial of everything. It was neither a solution nor an escape. So, in my rebirth, I learned to accept my dreadful existence, in its bubbling mass of inconsistencies and imperfections and indecisions and diseases and lies. I learned to accept it all before I returned, convulsing and crawling, to embrace my hideous gift of life.

Description
This piece (and narrative below) are part of my final project for my figure drawing class this semester.

Approx. 3'x4'. Graphite, charcoal, and acrylic paint on wood panel.

For Mary Shelley

As I struggled through life, I found my parts left behind. An accident left me dismembered, a bad relationship took one of my organs, and every mistake I made shredded my skin and pulled at my limbs. Years passed, and I found myself a floating, faceless lump, decaying dutifully towards my inevitable death.

Or at least I thought it was so, until one day, when, suddenly and unexpectedly, I found my soul lifted from the bounds of both space and time. If you want to know what the outside of space-time looks like, it is like a hallway with no ends and an interior with no tangible ceiling or floor. It is both a place and a void. It is everything and nothing, always and never.

It was there that I reunited with my lost parts. I felt myself grow gigantic as we molded together in a mass of bile and clay. It was like god sculpting the earth out of water and dirt, except it was hideous. I instantly recoiled at it all—the monstrousness of my totality, the ugliness of my humanity, the deformity of my soul. The horrors of my past blasted through the corners of my brain like a rain of bombs. Finally, I knew my true form and my true face, and it was unbearable.

My immediate desire, of course, was death. But as I coiled, swelled, and molded within the void, I came to realize the truth. The truth was that I—yes, I—was everything. Everything—all of time and space, all of knowledge, experience, emotion, reality—everything I could ever know manifested in this indigestible, inhuman form. Once I obtained this truth, I realized that death was not a thing but a denial of everything. It was neither a solution nor an escape. So, in my rebirth, I learned to accept my dreadful existence, in its bubbling mass of inconsistencies and imperfections and indecisions and diseases and lies. I learned to accept it all before I returned, convulsing and crawling, to embrace my hideous gift of life.