Was My Artwork Cursed?
“The Anxiety of Love” is likely my most haunting work, the one I’ve most often been asked of its meaning and once I tell, an appearance of disappointment waxes the face of the inquisitor. There are subjects that are raw and difficult for me to discuss; lifelong fears that for years kept me awake at night, sometimes looking out of the window of my childhood bedroom, making believe that Death was outside in the dark street, the occasional car driving through his wispy form; the hooded skeleton watching me until I could sleep again.
As 2013 began I had finished a long bout of constant and agonizing anxiety attacks. It had been caused by a spark of worry, which became insomnia and thus inflamed into physical manifestation. Heart palpitations, dizziness, a numbing, tingling sensation had spread throughout my extremities, exponentially worsening every night for a whole year. And then, after a visit to the emergency room of the local hospital and several days of long rest, the symptoms vanished leaving artifacts like a lake bed that had gone dry. I went to work, collected the larger pieces then scribbled emotions and memories that I hadn’t wanted to discuss onto paper until it became a blueprint. One night, my then fiancé and I stood and sat at our places on the cheap stage I constructed in our living room to make the picture. It took perhaps twenty frames or so but the raw fragments that became “The Anxiety of Love” had been created.
Simply:
The work is about the fear of falling in love with someone then having them taken away by death. It’s not a specialized fear nor one not shared by nearly everyone you and I know, however it had prevented me from being an ideal partner and sometimes I poisoned the wells of relationships to avoid what I had perceived as the inevitable suffering. Who actually suffers when we choose lifelong solitude? Yet we crave companionship and love. I chose love then deeply drew it in.
My fiancé and I married later in 2013 then months after moved from New York City to New Orleans. I had begun selling prints of “The Anxiety of Love” at a local gallery and online. It seemed that this work would sell out nearly every month no matter how many prints of it were made. Customers would write me from all over the world via email or social media platform requesting the story behind the print. What did it mean? I was elated that something I had made resonated with so many people. I’ve estimated that at least five hundred prints of “The Anxiety of Love” had sold since it became available for purchase and then, at the beginning of 2020, I swore to never sell it again.
In December of 2019, our daughter Salem was born three months dangerously earlier than her estimated due date. A few days later, while my wife was still recovering in her hospital bed, we received news that she had a potentially life-threatening disease, which may have contributed to the early birth of our daughter.
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Salem did well most nights while she was hospitalized in NICU but she had trouble with her lungs and breathing on her own without intubation. My wife meanwhile was in and out of doctors’ offices for official diagnosis, bloodwork and treatment options. While her prognosis improved, Salem sometimes struggled. One night while visiting Salem, her oxygen levels significantly and dangerously dropped. It’s a possible exaggeration here that the alarms and shrieking of machines plugged into our baby sounded like the inside of a cockpit of a plane that was about to crash but that’s what my memory recalls. It was a long night but she eventually recovered. My nerves had not.
There are no atheists on a battlefield. You speak with spirits, confront curses and blessings, appeal to God and make promises through prayer on the behalf of the welfare of your family. Now I have the insight to understand the compulsion to stop selling prints of “The Anxiety of Love”. It was how I could control the situation, the only thing I could do to protect my family even if it made no sense at all. Had I had somehow called my fear? Like attracts like. Ceasing production of that print meant that my fear, the one that seemed at the time to manifest would prevent its manifestation to spread to the lives of those who had purchased copies of it. My fear had become reality and I could not allow it to spread. It was not a sane belief but it was an insane time for me. I think now of Edgar Allan Poe.
Why am I selling prints of “The Anxiety of Love” now? Fear can result in a “coming to Jesus” moment for anyone. I now feel that my experiences have enriched this work. I love it more deeply than before and appreciate its journey as I do my own. There’s a concept of a “tulpa” in the paranormal world. A tulpa is a sentient and real entity that is willed into existence from imagination and belief. I look at the image now and see life surviving life, which gives me now a feeling of hopefulness that I’m still trying to understand. My wife, Aryn now enjoys good health and has completely recovered from disease while Salem attends nursery school. She is clever, mischievous, funny and an absolute character befitting the city from where she was born. People still ask what “The Anxiety of Love” is about so I hope that this post satisfies curiosity.
“The Anxiety of Love” is available now at 50% off for all sizes.
