Tears

I just feel too stressed out and upset these days. I've always been obsessed(?) with crying ever since I had laid eyes on Pablo Picasso's 'The Weeping Woman' from when I was 7. Those who know me know I have a terrible tendency to cry, and cry at the simplest things. I think I just feel too much. I cry when a friend waits with me at the bus stop, just so she can walk home afterwards, I cry when I watch my parents come home after a long day of work, I cry when friends leave, or when I think of the friends that have left. I cry thinking about AIDS, thinking about strokes, longing, escape, thinking about futures, hopes and unattainable dreams. I feel the burden and the sadness of life to a much too sensitive degree, and it plagues me often.

I guess this started from an early age, I was never one to handle abandonment well (this was what it felt like!) and everyday when my mother left me at primary school I would cry until my eyes were red and raw, and felt like my tears were sandpaper. I would be ostracized to a corner where no one could see me and ignored for the rest of the day. And this happened everyday. I guess from a young age I didn't know how to handle it except for to be left alone to cry and cry and cry not doing anything about anything.

As a kid I loved art. When I was asked when I was 5 what the thing that made me happiest was I said 'To create art'. I loved Monet and Van Gogh and Picasso. The big names. I found Van Gogh's intricate brush strokes incredible, his biography enthralling. Monet's large and blurry dreamy landscapes captivated me, and Picasso's abstract and sharp images intrigued me. It was such a pity I lost all these aspirations to such conventional and inexpressive endeavors. Anyway, to see 'The Weeping Woman' hit me hard. I saw the suffering and the pain of this woman, the contorted and twisted face filled with so much sadness. I felt this sadness too, and could not explain it at all. It felt like some sort of confirmation after all, and demonstrated how we, as people can feel so much emotion but not be able to express so much of it into words.

I decided to take these photos mostly out of stress, out of procrastination, escapism and partly because I wanted to test my new camera (got a canon 7d what up). I just took some photos and did some watercolours and crudely superimposed one to the other. I do like the obvious 'flatness' of the watercolours as it doesn't bend to the forms of my body but also as it emphasizes them. As well as each distinct palette of colours creating a different mood or sensation that may be associated to crying. Alright, I think I wrote too much, and there is waaay too much childhood reflection in this post, should probably stop moping now.