Lena Dunham Instagram – When I was a little girl, my first therapist asked me to describe a particularly complicated emotion. When I couldn’t, she put a pad of paper and a tray of watercolors in front of me and told me to show her that way. What came out was ostensibly a self-portrait (only I’d given myself flowing pink hair, a swan-like neck and Christy Turlington’s bee stung lips) of a girl crying fat, turquoise tears- turns out it wasn’t really that complicated. From that day forward, I painted while we talked, a brilliant distraction that had me spilling my deepest secrets in no time as I dashed off minimal nudes and wedding dress designs. Recently, she sent me some of the images- they don’t look very different than what I’m painting now. My father always says artists spend their whole lives working out one idea.
I wouldn’t call myself an artist- at least not in that way. My parents are visual artists, and it was the engine our home ran on. Writing became my medium of choice, not only because I loved it but because it was a key mode of self-differentiation.
I stopped painting until 2018, when–at rehab and having had all sharpened writing implements removed as a matter of course–I found myself wandering into the “art therapy” room, where a woman in a jelly bean patterned dress and earrings shaped like autumn leaves sat alone. She looked so delighted to have a taker that she brought out all her wares. But it was the watercolors that caught my eye, the memories of those afternoons on the floor in my therapist’s office, painting “self-portraits” that looked nothing like the third grader with the blunt cut Betty Boop bangs who sat in front of her.
Since then, I’ve painted steadily–often to prepare myself for a particularly grueling stretch of memory-summoning. I love how messy watercolors are, and that once you’ve made the mess–there’s no way to fix it but to lean in, to say “fuck off, I meant to do that.”
The watercolors birthed Famesick, or vice versa. Here are some of the images. Famesick even includes one in its opening pages, a little nod to the women who told me to paint and tricked me into telling them the truth.
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