The "bicycle" in each of these images is a symbol for myself at this point in my life.
Continuing from my previous posts, discussing the difficulties of returning from war with a brain injury and PTSD and finding a way to re-integrate into civilian life:
Bike riding was becoming a wonderful outlet for me, not just for exercise, but as a way to recapture the feeling of freedom, as I was finding myself suddenly terrified of new situations.
Classrooms were the worst, and while small studio classes were not bad at all and actually quite enjoyable, large lecture halls were impossibly unnerving, as my hyper-vigilance would kick into overdrive and spin out of control as it attempted to identify every other person in the room as a possible threat.
My best tool to quiet my mind down at times like those was to always keep some drawing paper and pens with me and alternate between taking notes and focusing the distracted part of my brain on drawing or doodling.
The more radical and fantastic the art subject was, the further away my mind would be and the more at ease.
I was beginning to discover the ability of artwork to be exactly what my mind needed to feel whole and even happy.
Back then, I had difficulty even talking coherently. I would trip over my words, and forget what I was saying mid-sentence.
This would make meeting new people and socializing difficult, as I couldn't remember people's names for the life of me, and it gets pretty awkward when someone comes up to you and it's clear that you have already met and been introduced but you can't remember them.
I did a day-long series of "brain testing" around that time, to try to determine what part of my brain had been affected most by the injuries.
I struggled in language, word association, sequential memory, short term memory, and reading takeaway.
Actually, the one area where I performed stellar was in visual memory.
I had found my talent that made me feel whole again: I may not have been able to excel at everything that I did like I once had, but I now knew at least one thing that I could shine at.
Artwork would be my "toe-hold" from where I could start my climb towards recovery.
I had thrown down the gauntlet for myself.
If I wasn't challenging myself when I created a piece of artwork, then I was failing myself.
I sought to push the limits of my technical expertise, and constantly explored new techniques and media.
Sadly, a lot of what I learned in a "creative push" such as this series was lost not long after.
Somehow, my mind was able to expand enough to push the limits of productivity to new heights, but would then "dump" a large majority of what it had discovered shortly after.
That is why when I look at most of these images, I can't remember how exactly I created them but am grateful that at the time I pushed myself hard enough to have completed them.
This difficulty with "data retention" spread over to the minor in graphic design that I was working on alongside my major studio emphasis, and was making it a living hell.
The problem was that, working with software programs was extremely data and "sequence" intensive, and I was falling on my face on the most simple assignments.
Whereas I felt like I carried the flag for a lot of my studio classes, I was getting left behind in design classes by students who were fresh out of high school.
Yeah, it was pretty humbling.
I finished the minor all the same, but if I were to open Photoshop or Illustrator today I might as well be opening a Rubix cube.
I don't know if you noticed, but over the course of this series, the "bicycle" started off being lost in a void of shattered architectural shapes.
However, it ended up being lost in a pattern of organic, feminine shapes and themes.
Cold buttresses and empty windows are instead replaced by a recurring theme of "lips" and legs.
The final colored image is an abstract culmination, but in this one the bicycle is not "lost" in the image, but is instead integrated into the abstraction, and is being ridden by the abstraction of a female form.
I was discovering that allowing sexual energy into my artwork gave it an entire new life that not only made its creation more satisfying, but the finished product as well.
I was about to find my "muse."
