‘Overwhelm’ Artist Self Portrait

Entry for prompt 26 with Be Still Media:

‘Overwhelm’ is a conceptual Self Portrait artwork that relates back to my experience with domestic violence and mental health. 
This piece was a way to paint feelings that I couldn’t name at the time of feeling them… Only now as I look back on the past do I realise the weight of the trauma that my body was holding.

This piece visualises the anxiety I had bubbled beneath my skin, and the nagging feeling that I was about to burst. The titanium hold I had on my own lips, keeping myself quiet. The will to sit and stay… the want to stay. The need to. The feeling that the world will end if I stand up on my own two feet to leave. 
Though the feelings were a text book response to trauma, I felt alien. Like no one in the world could ever understand, and like I was the only one.

THAT is the power being human. The feeling it. The knowing that your response to trauma is normal, and still feeling anything but.

The smartest computer in the world will never fully know something, until it can feel it. 

Original Artwork: Acrylic on 60x60cm Wood panel