Not Waving but Drowning

For those of you who don't know, "Not Waving but Drowning" is a famous poem by Stevie Smith.  If you're interested, you can view the poem here.  To me, the poem represents not only death, but depression, misery, pain, etc.  The last stanza of the poem says,
 "Oh, no no no, it was too cold always   

(Still the dead one lay moaning)   

I was much too far out all my life   

And not waving but drowning." ©1972 by Stevie Smith

This stanza really inspired me to create a piece of artwork (alright, if I'm being honest, I'm also doing is as a "nonpaper" instead of a paper for my Brit Lit II class...).  

This is the result: 

The figure is a woman because the sketch that Smith drew alongside the poem was of a girl in the water, so that's what inspired me to paint a woman, standing in water, with the water reaching up to grab her.  Inside the water you'll see a figure bent over with words all around saying, "I hate my life," "Why?" "I don't care," etc.  This deeply depressing image, along with the image on her body and by her head, represent the depression that's inside of her and always attacking her.   It also represents the darker message of the poem.  The area surrounding the woman is bright, colorful, and filled with words and designs.  This is meant to illustrate Smith's playful rhythm and tone.  The background also serves to distract the viewer from the depressing images, illustrating how society likes to forget about the negative and focus more on the positive.  I got some of these ideas from three criticisms about the poem: 

• Not Waving but Drowning

          Poetry for Students

            Ed. Marie Rose Napierkowski and Mary Ruby. Vol. 3. Detroit: Gale, 1998. p214-226. COPYRIGHT 1998 Gale Research,                    COPYRIGHT 2007 Gale

•  Autonomy and Commitment in Twentieth-Century British Literature. Eds. Christine Reynier, Jean-MichelGanteau. Montpellier: Presses Universitaires de la Méditerranée. 2010. 145-161.

• Anderson, Linda: Gender, feminism and poetry

           The Cambridge Companion to Twentieth-Century English Poetry. Corcoran, Neil   (ed.)Cambridge; New York173-186

Watercolor Lamp

This is a watercolor, sharpie (or pen...), and gouache painting of a lamp that hangs in my living room.  The lamp itself is purple and black, but I really wanted to do a black and white painting of it because I thought the contrast would be really striking. 

The lamp caught my eye because of its shape.  It's rather convoluted and seems almost to be unidentifiable on its own.  I loved that I got to play with lines in this piece.  

Random other things from my sketchbook

Here comes the Random Stuff!!

This is what I like to call the Random Stuff.  It's drawings that I did quite a while ago that I found in my sketchbooks that didn't fit in the previous three posts.  Basically, they're not people, nature, or depression related.  

1.SMARTIES

            2. A HOUSE - I was asked to draw a house, so this is what I drew.                     

 3. RANDOM DESIGN

4. COCA-COLA GLASS BOTTLE

5. CROSS AND HEART

 6.ANOTHER RANDOM DESIGN

7. SOMEONE STUDYING

8. FLYING BIRD   9. RANDOM DESIGN

10. DESIGN

11. RANDOMNESS 

 12. I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT THIS IS...

13. ROCKING CHAIR AND A RANDOM LAMP

What Do You Do When You're Depressed? Art, Of Course!

I have suffered from pretty severe depression the last three and a half years or so.  I've dealt with highs, lows, self-harm, and even suicidal thoughts.  It's been difficult and trying beyond explanation. One of the ways I tried to deal with it was through artwork.  I find it incredibly therapeutic and it's a great release of emotion.  It's a way to convey things that are near impossible to explain verbally or things that are just too difficult or personal to talk about.  Here are my depression/darker pieces, let me know what you think by leaving a comment!

 This following piece is the only one I am going to give a description about, because to try to explain the rest in words would take away from what they are trying to say.  This next one was created from a short story that I wrote, which basically describes the doors as blocking my way from going through the pain in order to get better.  You can't see it in this photo, but behind the black inside the door are many small words that overlap, saying things like, "Dead," "Gone," "So alone," etc.

This is probably one of my most personal pieces, along with the second picture on this post, the one with the blade.