Landscapes: Land and Body

Landscapes: Land and Body
Crystal Marie
Blue Moon Gallery 
September 16 - October 10th
Artists Reception September 25th, 6-9pm

Landscapes: Land and Body is a visual and visceral experience illustrating through evocative materials, terrain which may at once be found on the land beneath my feet and that which covers my body.

Looking back at the evidence of my own becoming, these snippets of time and physical locale, are frozen memories, marking my passage of shedding social expectations and the childhood conditioning which taught me to reject my very core being.

As I’ve grown closer to becoming my most authentic self, identifying my neurodivergent wiring, and the impact not knowing I am Autistic until age 55 has had on my life, traumas dealt from those who sought to help me become a better version of myself rise to the surface of my mind. So often these lessons were delivered with benevolent intentions, but I learned that it was not safe to show my true nature to the world.

A lifetime spent hiding the parts of myself deemed too weird or unacceptable to others, became a life of living as a fragmented version of self. Chopped up into palatable parts and delivered with a smile – and a bit of eye contact.

With my recent diagnosis, I find relief. Finally, an explanation as to why these traits and thought patterns, sensitivities, and compulsions that are so intrinsic to me have been so misunderstood and so burdensome to others.

Permission is finally granted, I turn back to look at these disconnected landscapes from my past and I gather them like children, back to their rightful place as heirs, stitched and glued together, no longer discombobulated and scattered. Stronger now.

I am whole.