Suicide and Survival Portraits: Writing and Drawing

Over the last year I did a series of about fifty self portraits--usually when I was feeling depressed and suicidal. I call them the "Suicide Portraits".

Last night, around midnight, I did this blue self portrait. I wasn't feeling suicidal just a little lonely--which is normal-- and that is why I call this one a "Survival Portrait". I have survived the desolation and trauma of broken dreams, a broken marriage, and a broken heart.

With all the portraits I added brief writings, describing my thoughts and feelings. I will eventually publish the drawings and writings together.
Here is the writing that went along with this drawing:

"I never seem to draw myself looking very attractive. I only try to draw what I see and not project any sort of mood onto it, yet the drawings always capture what I am feeling at the time.

I can't call this one a suicide portrait because I wasn't feeling suicidal. Perhaps I ought to call it a survival portrait. Thoughts of suicide still come to me, usually as images of myself hanging or of me sticking a gun in my mouth. But the images are dull and faded like old photographs in an album--like whispers rather than the earlier screams.

I have been so busy with schoolwork that I don't have time to sit around and brood. School has put off my anxiety about the future until another day. It's nice to have more immediate goals.

In the end I may be a crazy mumbling artist living in a cardboard box, but at least I will have taken my shot at honoring the muse. I am doing this by working to get degrees in Fine Art and Creative Writing.

Matsuo Basho, a Haiku and Renku Master, was one of the world's greatest poets, yet he lived in his soggy broken "Banana Hut". I wish I had the peace Basho attained--maybe I will someday have it.

Earlier tonight the rich neighbors--the ones that strung up all the white Christmas lights--had a Christmas party. I heard loud voices and barking laughter then a woman shouted, 'I love you.' A minute later there was the slamming of car doors. Now there is only silence and the sound of the rain."

I don't know why, over the last year, I drew all those portraits. I guess I was trying to get outside the suffering a little bit--to get outside my body and focus on the task of drawing. What I do know is that I felt driven to do it and I know that the process helped get me through the dark time.

Also, I don't know why I feel compelled to share what I draw and write.

One hope I have is that I can share my love of writing and drawing and that, like a spark, it will touch off the tinder in someone's heart.
My hope is that I can share what worked--and still works for me--so that some of it may work for someone else.
In that vein I will share a few things:

Two inspiring books on writing--"Writing Down the Bones", and "An Old Friend From Far Away". Both books are by Natalie Goldberg. The later one is about writing memoir and contains many prompts and exercises.

Two inspiring books on drawing--"Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain" by Betty Edwards. (I found that the best part of this book--for me--is the chapter on Blind Contour Drawing. C.f., Elizabeth Layton and her art that was inspired by this chapter.)

And "Keys to Drawing" by Bert Dodson.

I found these books to be very inspiring and helpful, but you don't have to wait to get the books, you can start now.

Try this: set down with a piece of paper and a pen or pencil. Set a timer for ten minutes. Keep your pen or pencil moving until the timer goes off. (If you get stuck keep writing and just write "I feel stuck, I feel stuck" until you feel unstuck.)
Try the prompt, "I remember...." You can use "I remember..." again and again and later go back and cross most of them out once they have served the purpose of triggering your memory.

Try this: set down with a piece of paper and a pen or pencil. Set on object in front of you-- something that means something to you or that is interesting. Set a timer for ten minutes. Keep your pencil moving until the timer goes off. Follow the edges of the object in front of you as if your pencil tip was an ant slowly creeping along, tracing it out. Draw what you see and take the time to really look. Tip: you ought to look more at the object you are drawing than at the paper.

Remember go easy on yourself and don't let your inner critic spoil the fun.


If you find these tips or books useful I would really appreciate hearing about it from you. Good luck!

The Intruder Series and The Suicide Portraits

This drawing, "The Intruder" is one of a series of drawings that I did during a very dark period of my life.

My wife and I were living in Vancouver, Washington. We had moved in order to buy a house, but neither of us realized how much difference it would make, moving just across the river.

My wife needed the car for work and I felt stuck in that ugly, toothless city. You can't even get a good cup of coffee over there and it seems like the only dog allowed in Vancouver is the pit bull. I remember the flat blocks and run down houses surrounded by chain link fences and the Cash Connection on the corner. Everything had a cheap dollar store feel to it.

I saw less and less of my wife and she would often come home crying. I asked her what was going on and she said it was just some sort of mid-life crisis. She was in her early thirties, so I took her word for it--after all I had went through my own life-transitions.

She began to drift away from me and I could feel it, but I didn't know what to do. We had once been so close we called ourselves "soul-mates" and we were the envy of our friends and family.

I turned to drawing and painting. The drawing above, the one with the dark silhouette and fly, is one of the first of the Intruder Series. It felt as if I was an unwilling psychic--I saw a series of images in my mind's eye: my wife and I in bed while leering men looked in at us through the bedroom window; our house on fire and a gorilla breaking through the front door; strange men standing on the front lawn of our house with the impassive, thoughtless faces of zombies, and the blow-fly buzzing around and crawling over everything.

I didn't know what it all meant because the images were coming from the damp-deep-down in the well of my psyche and not from my conscious mind. The images were disturbing and I didn't always draw them. I didn't want to see.

I didn't see much of her in those days and so I often drew her back or drew her sleeping beside me. I was trying to hold on to her--I realize that now. The drawing to the right is one of my drawings of her as she rushed off to who knows where. I think the caption written on the drawing says it well--"Always on the go."

When the housing market crashed we lost the house in Vancouver and moved back to Portland. Not long after that I discovered the truth of what was going on, and finally, reluctantly I left her and our two cats and headed for Eugene, Oregon.

When I first got to Eugene I was living in the basement of a friends house and whenever the dark fingers of suicide reached out for my throat I turned to drawing. I did a series of nearly 50 self portraits that I call The Suicide Portraits. I was looking for myself in the dark and my pen was the flashlight.

Now I am going back to school to earn myself a Fine Arts Degree but I will never forget how the ugly truth surfaced in my artwork like a bloated corpse rising to the surface of a swamp and how I drew my way through the dark tunnel of suicide by finding my face in the dark.

To the right is one of the Suicide Portraits.