Uhh I'm feeling a lot of things at once

2023, 28 x 40" Mixed Media: pastels, gouache, ink and acrylic on canvas.

I (unknowingly) suffered from a CSF leak (cerebral spinal fluid leak) for most of my life. The presence of the leak severely impacted my sensory perception. The lack of fluid surrounding my brain brought about several blood clots below my skull. I underwent two procedures that were five years apart to evacuate these clots. For a few months after each procedure, my senses felt very different, I didn't suffer from light sensitivity in the same way, but my sense of smell seemed to have returned. The filter between my body and the world felt like it had been rubbed on a cheese grater, thinned out. I spent the next few years figuring out the cause of these clots and eventually doctors realized I had a leak in my spine. I got an epidural blood patch to close the leak last year, and it changed my life completely - post patch, my senses felt so heightened, I could see clearly and didn't need to wear glasses anymore, colors felt brighter, and every smell felt more potent. My world re-emerged in high-definition. I felt some sounds in my face; car horns made my nerves pulse, and spice made my tongue sting. It was (and is) so breathtaking and sweet, but thinking of the years I lived below a sensory cloak brings some bitterness. I often create to discern the significant shifts in sensory perception I have experienced throughout my life and to have new perceptive experiences through the process of creating work using varied mediums. To offer viewers of my work a glimpse into my experience of severe sensory change, to share the taste of some of the bitter and the sweet.

The intention behind this specific work is to depict a period of sensory abundance. The base layer of the piece is composed of several circular orbs that mimic migraine visuals, auras of light that form upon sensory triggers during a headache episode. Multiple bursts that encompass and absorb. The upper layer, or the web of the piece, is meant to be ambiguous, simultaneously depicting nerves within the face, neurology, pulsing, beauty, flora, confusion and abundance. The disconnect between both layers is intentional and alludes to change in sensory perception abilities, moving between the past and the future. How the senses are altered with and without the presence of pain, the contrasts between the bitter and the sweet. It is not only the range of mediums and textures used to create the piece that supports its message of sensorial abundance, but also how these mediums are layered over one another and the varied results they bring about through these combinations of layering that enhance the work's feeling of profusion. The use of oil pastels on textured canvas creates a backdrop of roughness that rests below a web done primarily using a dull matt gouache; certain sections of the web are done in acrylics and reflective ink to create tension. The shadows of the flowers were done using water-based pencil crayon over the oil pastel to create hostility between the two layers. The piece was created with the concepts of noise, chaos and excess in mind. It visualizes the sensation of these concepts on a spectrum, neither good nor bad, but experiencing noise, chaos, excess and abundance with and without physical strain and pain, the idea that pain can only begin to be processed once it's over, not at the peak of it but in a valley, a valley where your senses are highly enhanced, there's a music festival and a whole new life, and you're beginning to process the past at the same location. Confusion is usually considered a negative feeling, but to be truly confused, you have to have pain, joy and something in between, many choices with the paths leading up to them blurred out.