His Indelible Essence
60x48in. mixed-media and acrylic on canvas 2020
Against his diagnosis of Alzheimer’s dementia and its death grip on personhood, I set the memory of my father holding a bouquet of flowers to preserve the indelible essence of who he is and was—a sweet, kind and generous man. I asked him to don a jacket and hold a bouquet of flowers. He readily agreed, excited to be photographed.
Life Taking You Nowhere
60x48in. mixed-media and acrylic on canvas 2019
Driving is a watershed moment and one that is hard to broach with your loved one when the time comes to take away the keys. While working on this painting, David Bowie’s “Golden Years” and the verse, “Don’t let me hear you say life’s taking you nowhere” stuck in my head. To be in the throes of dementia is to be on the road to nowhere.
Golden Years
A couple celebrates 60 years of marriage. Her beloved husband stands by her side, like a ghost, haunting everyone at this milestone event. Not knowing where he is or what he’s celebrating, he’s more of an apparition, almost disappearing into the patterned wallpaper. But she remembers their vows--in sickness and in health and understands that she is no longer his wife, but his caregiver. Heartbroken yet determined to see him through the stages of Alzheimer’s dementia, she’s the gatekeeper, custodian of their past. It is the long goodbye.
Vertigo: It's All In The Game
60x48in. mixed-media and acrylic on canvas 2019
My dad suffered from vertigo in the late stages of Alzheimer’s. Explaining how he felt during those bouts, he’d say that he was slipping and swirling. A checkerboard with distorted chess pieces tip. Playing cards slip onto the floor. An illustration of vertigo.
Can't Get It Out Of My Head
Language lost. Words irretrievable. Connection broken. Cut off, there is no bridge between the cerebellum and your hand. Even the newspaper or a novel are incomprehensible. Nerve cells die while brain tissue is lost due to the build-up of beta-amyloid plaques and tau protein tangles. Days grow longer, darker. It is devastating.
Nowhere Man
What is it like to be alive yet untethered, not anchored to place? Where everything fractures, vanishes, slips away. What is it like to enter the terrifying de-creation of the self? In the painting, the still-life’s projected from his head tell the story of my family’s experience watching my father progress through the later stages of Alzheimer’s dementia. The surreal images of seemingly unrelated objects reveal the disintegration, the undoing, the unraveling of self and language.
The Gathering Dark
My dad forgot the names of the people he worked with during his thirty-year career. This bothered him. Gathering documents and letters, he stored them in his briefcase. Numbering hundreds of documents, he tried to form a timeline to anchor himself in a time and place. But the disease, like a fox, robbed him of his memory. He couldn’t even write his own name. In the painting, the ones and zeros represent the binary representation of the EBCDIC coded version of his name, the extended binary code that he used as a systems analyst.
Diversion Mural
Sundowner’s syndrome causes those suffering from Alzheimer’s to think they are away from home and need to return. They pack suitcases, collect belongings, and repeatedly say they want to go home. Diversion murals in memory care facilities camouflage exits, helping to keep those living with dementia from the impulse to roam.
Take Me Home
People with dementia become increasingly anxious, confused and have a deep desire to go home. Unmoored, no longer at home in their lives, they search for what they’ve lost. Maybe home is not a where, but a when. Are they hoping to go home to a time when they felt safe and secure? Maybe home is not a dwelling, but an identity, a need to come home to oneself, an existential longing for where we were born, for our childhood, our parents, our earliest home. Where is home?
Don't Know Which Way Is Up Anymore
36x24in. mixed-media and acrylic on wood 2020
Someone living through the later stages of dementia is in the state of un-becoming, unraveling.
Just Beyond Yourself
40x30in. mixed-media and acrylic on wood 2020
Inspired by a poem by David Whyte comes the idea of shape-shifting, of Nature recalibrating the brain as one ventures into unknown territory on his way to being transformed. Where one forgets the past and no longer needs to navigate the future. Where everything else falls away as one comes home to ones’ self. Like leaves in autumn whose only agenda is that of letting go, his body returns to the earth.
One Pink Daisy
30x30in. mixed-media and acrylic on wood 2020
After my father’s diagnosis, one way that I coped with the devastating news was to take photos of my dad holding flowers as a way to preserve the essence of who is was, a gentle, kind and loving father. This painting is based on an image that I took of my dad holding a single flower.
Expectant in a Blue & White Chair
30x36in. mixed-media and acrylic on canvas 2020
After my father’s diagnosis, one way that I coped with the devastating news was to take photos of my dad holding flowers as a way to preserve the essence of who is was, a gentle, kind and loving father. This painting is based on an image that I took of my dad holding a bouquet of flowers.
Flowers For Forgetfulness
30x24in. mixed-media and acrylic on wood 2020
After my father’s diagnosis, one way that I coped with the devastating news was to take photos of my dad holding flowers as a way to preserve the essence of who is was, a gentle, kind and loving father. This painting is based on an image I took of my dad holding a bouquet of flowers.