In this ongoing body of work I examine a period in my life that metaphorically resembled a tear in the fabric of my being. A phase catapulted into existence by a trauma response to manipulation and abuse at the hands of an intimate partner from whom I eventually escaped. Sense of Self illustrates a turning inside out of experience and perception of the world. Something that began as a way to release inner pain took me on a journey to reclaim my balance and to the most important discovery of all. Self.

Multiple in-camera exposure (no generative technology) is used to convey the experience of a splitting apart of the self, the questioning of one’s own reality and losing a sense of inner balance. The questions I had to explore, the clinical terms I had become familiar with that described the destabilization and manipulation I had experienced at the hands of another became the foundations to images. External chaos created internal chaos leading to a visual process of deconstructing self in order to reassemble the whole. A montage of self exploration, an unraveling in the open and fusion with the landscape mentally and metaphorically was one way back to equilibrium. Nature, long refuge became instrumental in redrawing the map of my inner world and the blueprint upon which i could illustrate the journey.

Sense of Self is an inflection point in life’s journey which I determined is the only way forward. What Robert Frost famously wrote as “The only way forward is through”.