THE 32 SKETCHES

It wasn’t until I was 50 years old and pairing some sketches I’d done through my late teens and early 20‘s with some of my Diary entries that I was able to take a sobering look at what I once thought were simply creatures of my imagination, only to realize that they were the inner demons from my childhood screaming out loud on paper.

It’s important to note that while many of them were done in black and white ink, the majority were done in a mix of charcoal and lead and the cigarette ashes from my father’s ashtray. In fact, some of the later ones I did while I was in college were done with the cigarette ashes from His ashtray as well.

I was a Phoenix rising from the ashes!

At first it was difficult to assimilate my former realities, and I could feel myself slipping backwards down the same black hole my husband succumbed to. But then I opened my eyes to the mirror I was standing in front of and reminded myself of who I’ve become.

For so many years I only thought I didn’t have a voice and that I didn’t know how I was really feeling. But in these sketches, I now clearly see something deep inside of me that had been speaking for me without words in one of the most ominous and cathartic ways imaginable. As it turns out, The Light was inside me all along … buried beneath all the ashes.