sleeping in the wreckage of words

Depicted is a renaissance style sleeping women surrounded by the weight of the world. I used pages from poems by Rupi Kumar, Virginia Woolf and Jane Austen. This is an expression of exhaustion. I originally created this during a period of reflection on my life and my collected experiences. I had just come out of a period of survival and felt incredibly disconnected from myself. I was lost and crumbling under the weight of the world. I couldn’t see past the labels and words society had placed on me the expectation of action. Instead of figuring out another short term fix for my problems I decided to just stop. I stopped painting for over two years and this was the first thing I created after that period. Painting on top of the painfully beautiful words these women strung together released me from their looming meanings and allowed these parts of me to rest, for however long they need to.