When art, life, and sickness is intertwined

Marta Mazur

I had a conversation with a patient on the gray winter day. A very nice, very sick, and beyond grossly obese woman recently found out she had a growth on her kidney. As we talked, she proposed a story: she will go on the diet, she will make healthy changes, she will turn things around. I wondered what story guided her the last 20 years and how powerful it must have been to get her to this point. If she didn’t see its flaws, how much I am, blinded to mine.

I thought about the patient and I thought about myself. Guided by so many stories that will numb to reality and help me step from one day to another. Which is true, which is a total fantasy. Which is generated by outside force I don’t even understand, and which is my own? How many artificial constructs I have erected to myself?

I go to my studio. It calms me down. After many years surviving, there are still some aspects of me that I may dare to call my own. I just need a moment of silence; I just need to close the door. I must learn to shed these stories one by one and try to find some truth in this noise.

Let’s call it daily detox.

Coming home at sunset, cold wax and oil, 20 x 16 inch, 2020.