Too Sad for Society (diptych)
Morphine Dreams 20” x 30” Archival inkjet prints from chemigrams 2020-2024
In my series, Morphine Dreams, I turned to abstraction to process the grief of losing my parents ten weeks apart in the same year after three months of extremely intense caretaking while they simultaneously, and very rapidly, declined. My parents had not experienced opiates before. Each piece within the series is titled with the conversations, musing, and dreams of my mother or father in their final days, providing a bit of comic relief as their words became increasingly obscure.
The chemigram process involves painting a relief, in this case prescription medication and body oil, onto light-sensitive photographic paper and moving the paper between fixer and developer. The relief washes away in uneven bits, leaving behind a unique abstract work with unpredictable patterns and colors.