PATTHER HELLSTROM: GRIEF PATH

3rd Floor Gallery

Introduction:

Grief is at the heart of individual experience. Shock, denial, anger, bargaining, guilt, depression and acceptance  are the stages passed through as grief is processed. Grief significantly  affects 40% of the bereaved as they suffer from stress and anxiety within the first year after a significant death.  Yet grief remains mysterious in our Western culture. Mourning, on the other hand, is an outward expression of loss involving religious-based rituals, which celebrate life everlasting through the promise of heaven. Buddhist nun Pema Chodron suggests, "When we cling to thoughts and memories, we are clinging to what cannot be grasped. When we touch these phantoms and let them go, we may discover a space, a break in the chatter, a glimpse of open sky.” In contrast, the Western poet W.H. Auden in  “Funeral Blues” suggests the finality of death: “He was my North, my South, my East and West, / My working week and my Sunday rest, / My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song; / I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.” Be it life everlasting, reincarnation or the finality of death, grief speaks to one of our most difficult human questions:  What’s next?

Grief Path: Graphite lines speak to the intellectual story line of events plotted over four years and  a number of significant losses in my life.  Considering the trajectory of expectation around grief in our Western Judeo-Christian culture, I began to wonder, How long does our culture allow grief to persist before receding to normality? How is grief shared by those in relationship? What are the navigational tools on a grief path?  The gestural paint in this piece addresses the immediacy of each moment, flowing through waves of emotion. Letting go of the opinions around the loss resulted in moments of grace and acceptance for me. This project is in the context of my work over the last fifteen years, centering on the energy flow within daily experience. Equilibrium is reached in my work as structural lines hold despite insistent disruptions,  suggesting stability within chaos. In 2012 my work delves into the dark beauty of those disruptions that, like an internal weather system moving through consciousness, disorient balance.

Grief Wounds: Intimate paintings I created in 2009 were based on the idea of wounds caused by grief.  To achieve  a tactile connection with bruising and wounding, I shot through these paintings with a .22-caliber gun at a shooting range. The actual holes are the center point of the injury. Visual scabbing and bruises are created as the acrylic ink pools around those holes,  suggesting discolored skin, burst blood vessels and healing injuries. Grieving is an individual experience, like a wound because death involves the loss of connection. We lose the progression of an imperfect relationship and tend to see the deceased in a perfect, unflawed light. However, “perfect” means “whole” in the fullness of its definition. The wholeness of loss seen  as part of the life cycle is the meaning.

"Patter my Patter, don't worry. Worrying doesn't help." Last wisdom January 23

 Harlow J. Hellstrom Jr. February 20, 1931- January 27, 2012