Channeling fear into art

So, if it’s not obvious, I am an insanely neurotic individual. The kind of neurotic and paranoid that makes me believe that the wholly illogical is actually going to happen to me. Like oh, a pregnancy, despite the fact that I’m on birth control and haven’t had intercourse and haven’t had any semen anywhere near me. I won’t get into the finer details of this mild form of fucking insanity but I’ll say that it happily lead to expression through art (on Andreas’s part too; maybe he’ll share some of the things he wrote):

Motherhood

So, I could talk more about my deeply internalized fears of pregnancy and motherhood, the paralyzing terror I experience when faced with the idea of being pregnant and the ridiculous amount of neurosis involved with this (like how I used to be afraid I was pregnant before I was ever even in a relationship) but instead I’m going to take this opportunity to talk about how this has created a bit of a shift in my art.

I think it would be safe to say that this is one of the stranger, more surreal things I’ve ever drawn and finished and I’m very glad of that. Even though it didn’t take as much time as Key To My Heart I’m still immensely proud of it. For a very long time now, I’ve felt trapped by my own artistic abilities. There are certain things that I want to do but I’m not sure how; I’ve grown bored with just drawing a person on a page, regardless of how pretty that person is. Key To My Heart was a step forward; it involved color and something more than just a person standing there. Motherhood is another step; it’s taking me away from the comfort zone of drawing people that actually look like people and that’s exciting. I’m hoping to explore more with my own artistic abilities; drowning in your own stagnant art is a scary, sad thing and I don’t want it to happen to me.