Sundrip Journals
More than a clown is about a once voiceless woman, alone in the dark with her makeup. She was just a clown. She painted on faces until finally someone believed believed she’s more than a clown.
Then hope set in. Flowers began to grow, birds sing their morning songs and bumblebees bring in more life. Yes, change, all around her. There’s hope now that she herself believes she’s more than a clown.
Please see my Etsy shop for purchase details. www.Sundrip.etsy.com
Faith Magdalene Austin at Sundrip
Joe is a guardian cat. A watching feline. A gentle whiskered friend whom I adore. It’s just that sometimes the psychosis pushes me away from him a little, away from people a little. I want to isolate.
I have to force myself to accept this new mental weirdness and fear. I wear paranoia. I’m dripping in it. I only know to fill my cup and clean my paint brushes. Art it out!
Covid-19 handed me a fever high enough to leave permanent hallucinations and damage, for which I feel shame. But my cat Joe still finds me palatable to love and be seen cuddling, openly. His love gives me a little more strength to keep going.
What goes in your cup of trials and stress to dilute it so you can do one more day ? 🙂
Tea cup art by Faith Magdalene Austin
Finishing “Awake” took much effort but it is here, reworked, beaming with color and striking details.
Bellow are my comments.
I woke to a new existence somewhere unknown, they called it a stroke. Now words come like slow snails, or they are kidnapped so as not to form on my chapped lips.
I painted the emotional roller-coaster I felt as I played tug of war with my body, emotions, speech and interpersonal relationships. Ultimately I felt lost, defeated and misunderstood. I also thought I’d never paint again.
Grueling therapy and persistence with paint brushes helped me get to the point where I can say I’m awake. I’m awake to what has happened and the I’m happy the hardest part of it is behind me. Awake is about surviving the body after stroke and making it my new home.
You will find more images and a short video on Etsy. I also accept PayPal.
Thank you for letting me talk. Thank you for visiting SUNDRIP Art for Life.
Faith Magdalene
I wonder if my cat hates my job every bit as much as I hated my mother’s profession? How many times have I said to Joe Schmoe, “Here I come?” but made him wait a long time in dead silence? How many times have I sworn to take a break? “Really, here I come.” Sometimes he looks lonely. I worry he feels ignored just like I did.
Instead of papers and pencils it’s paint brushes and canvas.
I enjoy brushing Joe and chatting at him. The aides adore him and take over loving on him; and I let them. When they leave it goes back to being me and him in silence.
He’s sleeping in bed with me again. He sleeps by my head, curled up, back to me, in silence. It’s always so quiet in here.
I’m at the table, back to Joe. Right now I can only hear the trickle of the waterfall in the Betta tank. Ah, but what is this? Joe has turned the tide? He came to sit beside me and break being apart in silence. He kissed my hand and lay beside me. I’ve got to go. There’s no way I can do anything but spend a few moments with him just as he is asking.
My heart is smiling. The day has been given a great gift.
Faith Magdalene
I intended to keep the colors brighter like always, shockingly bright, but this time darker colors felt right.
The rainbow was given a darker red and a mustard yellow stripe in a midnight blue sky. The clothing of the figures is in plum, dark red, green and blue.
As I worked I realized the high amount of frustration and anger associated with feeling like a freak; feeling broken if not shatteted. Line after line I drew myself shatteted for the last time! I will not do it again.
I felt so hidden behind the lines, even hidden from myself. I’ve described being a multiple like looking into carnival mirrors. It’s hard to know who is who. Well, I may not always know the who but I do know The Way.
I need hope too. I don’t feel hopeless but sometimes I feel like I’m in prison here. I wish I could leave. This isn’t my home anymore. However, I can’t just up and go in the middle of the night – won’t up and go like that. I’ll move somewhere safe, clean. One thing is for sure, there’s no more peace here.
The painting will be in the shop very soon. Check my Etsy.
Faith
This is about the stress and pressure from people telling me what I should be doing and me having a hard time finishing projects. Slowly but surely they are being completed, this one too very, very soon. –
Sometimes I feel like a freak but I try to hide it.
I try to blend in.
Say the right things, the right way.
I want to hold my face in the expression allowing emotions of the moment to show, balancing them on my brow and tongue like a real live woman.
I’m not normal. I’m not and the effort it takes to be, exhausts my tired spirit.
Sometimes I feel lost.
I’m lost
as ink scratches on
9×12 pads
roads and hills,
lands of dramatic color and wonder.
With each stroke of the pen to paper you hear the symphony of my madness.
There’s stress in the ink, acrylic and experimental designs. Stress to do it your way.
Change. Spotlight. Museum. Gallery. Gala. Teach. Speak, Lead!
Don’t waste your voice, your voice, your voice, your voice.
The art stops. The freak is seen clearer. And everyone finally goes home.
Faith Magdalene
The Deluge is complete and is in my Etsy shop. One of the things I point out about the balance. The woman standing has legs and feet that are wound around. Each foot meets a tiger lily, a child and a purple flower in full bloom.
It is haunting in some areas. Those are the areas to leave behind. Those are the areas of the past that I can’t take with me to the future that I am building here. I’m not going to another planet. I’m right here. But some of these things need to swim free because they no longer have a place here.
If you visit my Etsy it’s worded better 🙂 You may also purchase through PayPal. Please see appropriate email address on the contact me area.
Thank you for listening,
Faith
I’ve not shown off my Philodendron Hope plant in awhile. It’s growing out of two Betta tanks.
I’m going to clip it back soon and allow certain leaves to mature. It’ll look nicer cut back.
I have hope.
There’s no doubt about the hope I have, but the path to it feels difficult at times. Fear is enemy number one.
I know I have hope. I’m just having a hard time keeping my fingers on it.
Maybe it should be enough, the fact that I can see it and know it’s within arms reach.
Well, in typical artist fashion, I’ve got several projects in different stages all going at once. Still, I’m encouraged by the “I Believe” piece.
It seems to carry the same symbols as two other pieces, which is very interesting to me.
I’m so happy to be making art just for me! And I so love that one young girl’s hair is 3 hearts instead of round puffs. 🙂
OMGoodness I have fallen in love with collaging entire works with my own art scraps. How satisfying!
It makes me smile to paint here in this little place I’ve created; sipping tea, dabbing paint brushes, writing letters and such. Recently a naysayer called the entire apartment an ecosystem. He has no idea how happy that makes a girl like me.
I enjoy waking up to meaning, purpose and usefulness in my little ecosystem- apartment. I could use a double shot of usefulness about now.
Covid update – still running a fever. Unproductive cough, mostly at night. I still break out in a sweat which feels different from hot flashes. I have GI issues, a rash on my back, my scalp inexplicably itches, too. My blood pressure has dipped so low that I’ve passed out.
I ordered supplies from Amazon since getting to the store is out of the question. Coconut water, cheerios and of course jello were among many of the supplies. Why do I love jello so much?
Please excuse me, I’ve got some cuddling to do before the day begins.
Faith
CONTENT – Child Abuse. Strong emotion. Therapy Review. The art work is not finished but will eventually be in my Etsy shop.
If I believe I have a real future and a real hope, why do I keep wanting to go back and fix things? Why do I still feel like that little girl who needs her mother to love her?
No, it’s too late. I know she’s gone but I feel myself unable to give up. But not giving up the past means there’s less room for the wonderful future ahead, a future I firmly put faith in.
Today Dr D ask me if I could say anything to her what would I say? My words are in bold. I told her Don’t touch me! Don’t look at me! Keep away! You keep saying you’re going to give me a way, then do it!
That comment was interesting because the entire time I was talking to her I never said I love you or why don’t you love me? I never said hug me. I never said anything like that. It was it, Get away from me! Get away from me!
I didn’t want her to touch me ever again. I was angry about her watching me. I was angry about her letting others watch me. I was angry about all of the touch. I was angry about her destroying the mind of my sister. I was angry about her destroying the relationship I could have had with my sister. I just wanted her to go away. That was different from the feelings I thought I had. When I had the “spontaneous opportunity” to speak it was the voice of rage not a tiny, vulnerable child. That was incredible.
The artwork I’ve been doing lately shows exactly how I feel about my mother’s voyeurism. She was everywhere to the point that it was scary. Now that I think about it, if she stalked her boyfriend with us in the car of course she stalked my sister and me. And she wore that stupid black coat with the stupid hood looking like the grim reaper. She wasn’t holding anything, but dang! Standing in a pitch black hallway in a black trench coat watching people like a psychopath!
She told me she had people watching me and my sister and that nothing could be hidden from her. Dr D jumped in an said, “This is why you have DID.”
It was the most terrifying time of my life growing up with her and yet I thought I wanted that woman to love me. I wanted a little child me to go to her. To run to her. To be held by her.
Are you kidding me! No way! This is the woman who beat my lips with a wide tooth comb. Who beat my body with a towel rod. No. No. I have got to scrape this off of my heart so I can let myself have that future that’s so right in front of me. I’ve been crawling towards it. How do I scrape this off of me, the filth that she layered on me? The filth belongs to her. Whereas a future filled with hope is mine. I believe that with all my being.
Faith
Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and Eating Disorders occur together up to 40% of the time. My OCD and my eating disorder have gone untreated because there were other things that took first place like getting me emotionally stable so I could stay out of the psych ward, moving to stable housing, stabilizing dissociation and of course getting beyond the hospitalization in 2018. There’s always been something to push attention elsewhere.
Dr D and I have been discussing OCD regularly, and I’m still reading the OCD workbook. That’s going slowly because it’s very triggering. I discovered one of the most traumatic memories wasn’t my mother being abusive but having strong OCD symptoms for which she never sought help.
Every year when we went to Kentucky we crossed a bridge. While crossing we had to sit perfectly still for fear of triggering my mother, who said she’d drive over the edge. THAT is part of her OCD. At a reoccurring meeting, I worried I’d stand up and scream the F-word. THAT is the same kind of symptom from the disorder I inherited from her.
My mother and I share quite a few symptoms. We both need to see our belongings. I arrange and rearrange my apartment almost daily. It used to be daily. Now it’s once a week. The meds for OCD have helped me in many ways.
I keep quite a few art supplies out for two reasons; 1- easy to access 2- easy to see them, which brings me comfort.
Right now I’m having a difficult time with compulsive eating. There’s the obsessive thoughts followed by the compulsion. A box of 10 Twinkies was purchased the other day. Once the box is opened I’m compelled to eat the entire thing or risk something bad happening to me. I’m not sure what, but it happens with most packages of food. If I open it I’m compelled to eat the whole thing. I’ll eat during the day and night. I’ll wake up in the middle of the night until the item has been completely eaten. This means high calories that don’t get worked off like they used to. To make matters worse, three of my most vital medications has the side effect of increased appetite. I have that pulling on me and OCD associated eating.
There’s no strong emotion followed by binging. It’s obsessive thoughts followed by binging and compulsive eating. I don’t purge in any way though it has recently crossed my mind. I don’t want to gain more weight but I also don’t want to ever purge again, in any way.
I have to say, being in a wheelchair has increased pacing, rocking, counting and staying awake until I absolutely have to go to sleep. Then when I’m sleeping I don’t want to wake up. These may not all be OCD issues. I just recognize these behaviors in myself.
It can sometimes take
The book has really helpful information but as I said, it’s triggering because it brings back unwanted memories of my mother and her extreme behavior.
I’m unaware of aunts having OCD. As far as I know it’s in the immediate bloodline. It goes from my mother to my sister and me. It’s as disruptive in my life as dissociation.
Art
The woman feels very judged and misunderstood.
The 12×9 collage is on heavy paper and includes words and phrases cut out and strategically placed. It’s a work in progress. I’ve got to figure out what to do with the background. I started this piece today. I hope to finish it and one other piece very soon. The below piece is called The Deluge. The eating disorder piece is called Dignity.
Faith