No Possible Escape - For When we are Forced to Face Ourselves.
The Black Dog series are something that I have been working on periodically since late 2015. I started out painting these in oils and have one or two in semi-completed stages. Sometimes when I am in the midst of creating a piece the energy sometimes goes, and I dislike that because I could be in full energy-flow then all of a sudden find that for some reason I just can't finish a piece. In general I do tend to pick these up again much later but it can take years sometimes for the re-connection to be made. Thus, so often things are not in sequence as I feel they should be.
Recently, I created a Black Dog pastel piece, although this was more like a Black Wolf. One day, I decided that I was going to have another bash at pastels and to my surprise, ended up creating another Black Wolf or Dog. Maybe this is in the eye of the beholder but I do tend to see the Wolf with these pastel pieces rather than the Dog.
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| Black Dog - No Possible Escape. Trac Davies © |
This in some cases might seem self-explanatory. Here we have a scene that shows a woman hugging a dead tree, her face is turned away from the Wolf, who is wearing her cloak They are in a desert, hot sun, barren spaces with no shade or water.
Depression is one of those conditions, especially at the start of suffering, where people will turn and run and they will hide. They will hide not only from the outside world but from themselves. We all have a cloak or a mask to do just this and at some stages of our lives most of us do hide behind something else. Thus the cloak depicts our personality, it comforts us, protects us and we feel that we can function behind it whilst hiding our true face.
Yet the most important person we are usually hiding from is ourselves. We have all heard of the parable where the lost children of Israel wandered in the desert for a very long time. The yard-arm was 40 days and 40 nights, which basically meant that nobody knew just how long the time was that they were lost but it was a very long time.
Wandering in the emotional desert is something that people with depression tend to do when they are trying to get themselves back on even keel again. However, the longer we are lost in our own personal desert, the more we have to face something about ourselves that we would rather not.
Isolation, illness, bereavement, change of circumstances, moving house to a different area, moving to a new country, all of these things are examples of the 40 days and nights of isolation or lost years. They may last just a short while whilst we readjust to a new circumstance or loss but they may last for numerous years. The longer we stay in this state of mind, the more barren the desert becomes and the further away from ourselves we wander. So, instead of finding the respite and healing we need, this might just have the opposite effect. It depends on how we view it, because when life can be at its worst, where there is no respite from ourselves, when there is no internal shade, food or water, where we feel vulnerable and alone, it is then where we can find the real internal healing that we need.
The woman is in a shift, she looks drab and hangs onto a dead tree, she is hanging onto a dead life but it no longer serves her. She faces away because she doesn't want to look at the wolf. The tree has become just another cloak to hide behind but as this life dies, it becomes blacker and more rotten. This can make her very ill for she's hanging onto something that has died and it is internally killing her. In addition, this past self or life isn't hiding her because she has outgrown it so she is very noticeable. The sun beats down, there is not respite, she has to turn and face the fact that her life as she knew it is now over but she won't.
You see, the wolf who wears her cloak and is sitting patiently waiting for the woman to acknowledge its presence is part her own self. In nature, the predatory wolf tends to cut down the elderly and sick when they hunt and it is no difference here. Our Black Wolf will hunt and attempt to destroy those parts of ourselves that are sick or we have outgrown. However, as she is holding on for dear life to a life that no longer serves her, she has now become toxic to herself more than she has to anybody else and she is hurting herself. She has put herself further into the 40 days and nights more than the original situation did.
Eventually, she will have to turn and face herself, her wolf or her dog, is snarling because at present she won't. She is too busy being in denial that her old life is dead. All this does is make her black wolf-self attack her and sometimes just with the knowledge of its presence alone. It is there, she knows it is there but denies it, she also denies things have changed and so she attacks herself with her own denial and because of her denial the wolf-side of her grows angrier and larger.
Here she finally has to turn to face who she is, there is nowhere else to run, there is no hiding place as the tree will wither and die along with her old life. If only she could turn and embrace the life she now has in front of her, if she could hold her black dog in her arms and accept who she is, what she is, what she has now and what has past or gone, then there would be healing and respite.
Until she does, she will be caught in this stalemate and the longer she holds onto the past life or past selves, the harder it will be for her to face herself and her new life, but she will, because she has to. There is no other option.
PostScript.
In my haste to write this, I had forgotten a very important part of this piece of art. The wolf in the red cloak is snagged by the hood on the dead tree. So therefore, the wolf or black dog can't leave until the woman hugging the tree lets go of her dead life. Once she turns to face the wolf, letting go of the tree, thus accepting her new life, she will also let go of the wolf. In accepting our new selves we also let go of the depression, because it's only because we have not accepted a new life or way of being, that we have not let go of a dead life, that the wolf is still there. In holding on, we hold onto this state of mind.
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Trac Davies©
