Acrylic on paper, 12 by 16 inches.I have ambivalent feelings towards the hospital. I feel safe there, because everybody who works there, is on my side against the cancers. I also feel an aversion to it. Being treated felt as if in icy cold my upper skin layer was chafed leaving the flesh underneath open, while I had to lie still as they poked and prodded, stuck needles into me and cut in me...Before you know it, you've become an object, and that's cold...I'm grateful to the doctors and nurses who were sensitive to that and lifted me back to the status of a sentient being of warm flesh and blood with a small gesture (eye contact!, a smile, a slight touch, laughing with me at something totally futile, because sometimes I desperately tried to provoke it and tried to crack a joke...) In those instances of contact, I could relax a bit. There lie the good memories. When nothing like that happened, I braced myself and tried not to take things personally. Within a poignant cancer treatment trajectory, and then a second one, that was tough...
I feel sad myself when I look at this piece. But it also has something of a votive painting like Kahlo made after her bus accident: I can see something merciful in it...
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