In choosing a painting from Frida's work as my jumping off point, I thought about her life and you cannot think about Frida Kahlo's life without considering her intense chronic pain as a result of the trolly accident she was in as a youth and the many surgeries that left her at times worse than before the surgery and how in the midst of this pain she was able to create such beautiful art.
One cannot compare pain, it is impossible. I think when one compares one's pain with someone else’s it devalues either yours or theirs, yet we all have it. It is one of the things that make us human. Some are unable to get past it, some get through it, and some, the pain is the color on the canvas and it is beautifully brilliant.
My grandmother Dodge had polio as a child. She spent a number of years in bed. Her legs became a challenge not her excuse. My father told a story of his youth when she took him shopping for school clothes. They were downtown Canon City, Colorado. They were walking past a store front and she looked at her reflection in the window and said, "Who's that cripple". She never saw herself as handicapped. She was vibrant, energetic, creative and hard working. She raised four boys alone and had a successful career. She endured alot of pain and it made her magnificent.
The work of Frida Kahlo is not only poetically painful but also strikingly beautiful.
This leads me to my own pain and what I do with it. It is there. I don't know about anyone else, but I am on a journey through it, with it and in it and color is my companion.
What about you?
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