"Salamander"

"Sometimes all I have is to clutch on to my sanity.

"This face is on fire — and smiling through it. Part of my series stepping away from the "more beautiful," more melancholic portraits, Salamander was me giving myself permission to play with color directly on skin — to let emotion paint the face, not just describe it.

I drenched one side in molten yellows, oranges and burning cadmium reds, and let the other dissolve into bruised violets, deep greens and ghostly blues. The colors clash and bleed into each other, just like a mind in crisis does. Technically, it’s built in layers of thin glazes over impasto.

The text at the bottom is scratched into wet paint — sgraffito — so the words feel raw and desperate, not written on the painting but in it.

Around the head, the dark tendrils and orbs were painted with fine liner brushes, almost like ink, floating and dripping over the oil.

I painted it after visiting friend at Sunnyside — the psychiatric hospital in Christchurch, New Zealand — who was struggling with their mental health at the time. That visit stayed with me. That feeling of holding on by a thread.

The salamander is the creature of fire in alchemy. It represents destruction and creation. The moment everything burns down is often the moment of greatest revelation. Sometimes hitting rock bottom is where the more positive transformation begins.