It began when I started making art that frightened me because of what truths it made apparent. I feared a lot then, and to some degree still fear a lot now. But those fears are perhaps different things entirely for I  am no longer afraid of being marked by my supposed shame nor stigma. But rather, continuing  to allow it to dictate what I will and will not love. Through art, I gained the ability to vocalize that which I’ve been told to hide.

Creating art has always been my way of returning back to self. It is confrontation through mediums – that act of forcing out how I feel, confronting what I do not want to feel anymore, and the nostalgia of a particular feeling. It allows me to acknowledge that I am me – hopeful, kind, and vibrant – but no one is absolute in only their positive characteristics. Additionally, I contain an internal monologue that can be distant, bound to apathy, and yet irrefutably still very much my own. My paints and sound materialize this internal conflict. My art isn’t the embodiment of Bipolar I disorder, it is the collision of our strengths we present to the world and our supposed weaknesses that we tend to neglect - of which still too very much  need to be loved. 

My art does not depict good or bad emotions to have – but simply expresses that they are and attempts to validate those complications. I want to implore those who view my work to empathize not only with me, but with themselves for feeling something we can’t always quite understand. My philosophy is to not simplify the lived experience – whether mental illness occupies any part of that – but to express our feelings and passions in earnest so that we may work through our own chaos and perhaps find some beauty in it.

With love and hope,

Irene Wilde.