And How Are You?

And How Are You?

This painting started life with the working title, ‘Fibromyalgia’, and was very much a work that ‘had to get out’ and be birthed into the world.

What is fibromyalgia? It’s a condition allied and overlapping with other conditions such as CFS and ME. As such it is often described as a hidden illness. Fibromyalgia is characterised by chronic musculo-skeletal pain, sleep disturbance and continual fatigue. I’ve suffered from this for over half my life now and it’s something I’ve tried to come to terms with and tolerate, because there is no cure.

When people greet you in the UK, they often say, ‘How are you?’ Often, it’s a rhetorical question and if you were to be truthful in your answer you would offload the feelings expressed by the person inside the body of the figure in the painting: nightmare of a night, woke with a headache, pain in just about every muscle in the body and operating very much like a shambling zombie.

But you can’t - or don’t feel like - giving this response most of the time, so instead you put on your best smile and simply reply, ‘Fine, thanks. How about you?’ Which is the polite thing to say.

So, this painting attempts to express how I, and many people, feel and attempt to express themselves to the world.

There’s also a vertical division in the figure - male on RHS and female on the left. Apparently, over 70% of fibromyalgic cases are women.

As for the rest of the painting? Well, you can see what you want to see in it. For me, the bottom left contains organic glyphs that represent what may or may not be happening at the cellular level. At the bottom right there are what appear to be brightly coloured flames or waves. What does this suggest to you?

The upper half represents the outside world - bright, breezy, sunny uplands, blue sky. The lower half has greens as a backdrop with darker browns, russets and black on the inside of the body. Again, this contrast was created unconsciously rather than planned, but seems to express what sometimes goes on in the chaos that is my life.

One of the doodles lower down in the painting shows the structural formula for lactic acid. It was thought at one time that build up of lactic acid caused fibromyalgic pain. These days, research leans toward the brain’s misinterpretation of signals received, sensing pain when there isn’t in fact any damage. Some doodles are reminiscent of nerve cells that reflect this theory.

Other influences? The artist, Petr Strnad, features strongly, especially with the circles painted near the top. The ‘busy’ aspects to the figure’s body were very much inspired by the Russian painter, Anton Viskovskiy, who employs using abstract shapes and bright colours.

There are many other techniques and mark-making effects which I could go into, but I’ll leave things here. Maybe, this is a painting which no one will ever ‘get’, but that’s OK. As I said at the beginning, it was something that I had to get out of my system. So if you ever ask me, ‘How are you?’ My honest response will be to show you this picture.