Lost

 I named this picture Lost because it is exactly how I felt. I had lost my awareness, my ability to tolerate anyone in the room with me. My mind was gone. My memory reduced or non existent.  I do not remember exactly what date I did this pastel. It is at least 12 years ago though if not longer. I do remember making it though. 

I was in a greatly deteriorated cognitive state and having worked on the pastel for days, over weeks and months, to get an accurate picture, I was so blank and diminished visually that I could not do any fine detail, so it seemed that the only thing I could do was take a pastel and swoosh it across my portrait, to try and depict the devastation in my head. 

I felt sad on the one hand to seemingly destroy a portrait of myself in this way, that had taken so long to create, but I could barely focus or see. I could not think. I could not understand incoming information. This remains true today, though it comes and goes a little more now, so that I have brief moments of focus and some clarity. It felt right to do it.