Tough Titties

From "A Series of Self-Portraits"
"Apparitions No.1" - photo transfer and acrylic on wood

I have always had a fascination with the supernatural. This is a painting that I did probably well over a year ago, inspired by a vintage photograph from the twenties and reinterpreted as a sort of otherworldly self-portrait. I suppose that the effect that I have utilized is the kind usually achieved with a long-exposure photograph: a sort of still image of the process in which the head detaches itself from the body. However, the effect is also that the woman's head is a sort of tumor, obscenely regenerating itself again and again but oddly defying gravity.
Detachment is a familiar feeling for me. As a child and adolescent it paralyzed me with fear. I desperately wanted to ground myself, to feel solid, to connect back to "reality". The irony was in how much time I spent inhabiting my mind - so much so that I remember wishing that I could escape my constant stream of thought on many occasions. More recently I have fantasized of being able to hold my head at a distance, like a balloon on the end of a string tied tenuously around my wrist. So much farther from my the physical constraints of the body I loathe. So much lighter than the burden of flesh. Now detachment is my default. It is the coping mechanism I employ every day, although I dare say that I may not even inhabit my own head anymore. More likely I float just above it, ghost-like.