“Mending” Ourselves, an Extension to a Previous Post
Tags: Acceptance, Personal Story, Growth

I Lied.

I did not talk about why the post about Quinn’s artwork, Mend, was so deeply difficult for me to write. I avoided the subject and slapped on a pun because I was scared to share why Nathaniel Quinn’s painting made me cry. And I cried, big-time.

Above is my Mend-inspired painting where I used watercolors from a Lakeshore artbox I’ve had since third grade and a black Sharpie pen.

I’ve never been good with emotions. I don’t like them, they’re unpredictable, inconvenient, and it’s easier to ignore them all together. I don’t cry easily, and when I do, it’s in private and usually from teen hormone-induced angst and come out of it thinking how much of a waste of time and energy that was.

I am also a perfectionist and suffer from self-inflicted body dysmorphia. It means I strive to reach unattainable goals, I never think I am good enough or do enough, and I constantly worry about how I look in the third person (even when I am alone in my room) because no matter what, there is something wrong with my appearance because I have a scar on my left cheek, my eyes are too close together, my face is too long, I am too skinny, my nails are too short, my teeth are uneven, and you get the picture. Yes, I know I am incredibly privileged and lucky to be able to to live the way I do and have these be my concerns, believe me, I really do, and yes, I know that by giving into these intrusive thoughts I am wasting away my prime years of youth and in a few decades I will look back and smile and hopefully be happy with the way I look. But I still do it. I still struggle with it, and I am sure that I am in for a long fight against these thoughts. And I really, really, truly do not mean to complain and kvetch about “oh how ugly I am,” and I know that I am not alone in this mental fight against how I feel about myself and how I should treat myself.

Studying and analyzing Mend forced me to confront some of these feelings, and for a few weeks, I just couldn’t. I wrestled internally with trying to be vulnerable versus keeping up my public image of “perfection” which, by the way, was exhausting. I ultimately decided to do it anyway. I realized that if I saw someone do the same thing I’m doing and talking about personal issues to the internet, I’d feel inspired to maybe do the same, and at the very least feel less alone, because it is genuinely really freaking hard to believe those pastel pink rainbow glitter unicorn posters (you know the ones I’m talking about) that say “Love yourself!! There’s only one you!! Everyone else is taken!! Be a unicorn in a field of horses!!” (Not to hate on those posters, I actually have one in my room, too.)

In complete seriousness, loving yourself is an incredibly difficult and noble pursuit for life, and I wanted to try and express that in my rendition of Mend. There’s multiple hands and eyes floating around a very abstract self-portrait of myself. I could write about how everything symbolizes a different motif and meaning to the painting’s message, but I’d prefer that whoever looks at it comes to their own conclusions and interpretations. Even to me it means different things at different times, but I do know that I have a lot to learn, practice, and work on in the future to understand how to accept myself, and hopefully help others love themselves too.

Previous Post:

“Mending” Humanity

Nathaniel Mary Quinn is an artist from Chicago best known for his artistic compositions where he constructs abstract human portraits using different images and drawings to form a collage-like work of art.

One of his pieces, titled Mend, depicts a person made up of various different artistic mediums and styles. Feel free to look it up yourself if you are curious, or just click the link here. Quinn uses charcoal, gouache, pastels, and oil paint to create the painting, and the diversity of the materials he used shows in the different textures and piece-mail like cut-outs that form the picture.

When I first saw the painting, my attention was immediately pulled to the face. Probably because it had the most going on in terms of visual interest, and also because I had never seen anything like it before. I was instantly mesmerized by the details and complexity of the piece, and found myself trying to decipher what Quinn was trying to say.

I then showed the picture to my mom for a second opinion, and she furrowed her brows, squinted her eyes, and with a tilt of her head said “what is this supposed to mean?”

And hence, I got to writing this post.

I did not dig into the career or life of the artist, that is a rabbit hole for another time, and instead relied solely on my observations and thoughts about the piece to construct what I believe to be the message of Quinn’s painting. The fact that only the face is what has the most happening and is comprised of a collage of different artistic styles is symbolic of how we as humans are shaped by the people we love and learn from. I have the same crease in my brow as my mother when I am confused or frustrated, and I cross my 7s the same way my grandfather does when he taught me mathematics in elementary school. At my first glance (well, in all honesty, at my second, third, fourth glances too) Mend also has this interesting motif of how the human consciousness, in its essence, contains different dimensions and multitudes. Walt Whitman said it best, “Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself. I am large, I contain multitudes.” We are not flat, singular beings. We are the most advanced and intelligent life we know of (at least on Earth), and we are also the single greatest apex predators and threat to other living things on the very same planet. We have different faces, and different parts, we have physical bodies, and spiritual minds and souls. We each have different purposes and callings in life, and all of our different experiences unite us in one thing — it makes us human. I think Mend is a beautiful ode to the fundamental complexities and multi-dimensional aspects to people, and I look forward to learning more about the artist himself in the future.