Waking Up Other

"ever feel like an alien? / wrong place, wrong time / wrong kinda-sorta / alien?"

Waking Up Other‍ is an unapologetic anthem for the neurodivergent community that deliberately confronts the palatable outsider by honoring the raw majesty of existing in your own unique proportions, whatever those proportions may be.

A surrealist exploration of the neurodiverse experience, Waking Up Other depicts a warm, luminous figure in the foreground of a cold, gray cityscape. This work speaks directly to how it feels being consistently, constantly, and fundamentally out of place, habitually exhausted by the friction of masking while trying to fit into a structured, monochromatic world while navigating The always-feeling of being 'the wrong kind of outsider' -- not a romanticized, delicate fairy but something massive and entirely unclassifiable.

When I painted this piece, I knew nothing about the neurodiverse world. I knew Odd. I knew separate. I knew friction, and I knew strange. Fortunately, the mind is pretty incredible, and the artist mind often generates truth before the artist recognizes it — As was the case with this painting.

This piece came about sometime ago from a doodle that turned into a thumbnail sketch with a prone figure in space before turning into a prone figure with a fairy before a cityscape. I thought the fairy was my fascination - I am actually quite fascinated with fairies — and I assumed the fairy was a companion. But I was uncomfortable with what I thought because it never quite fit. every time I looked at the finished work, I was bothered until one day, the title popped into my head and that is when I knew the story of this work. That is when I knew the alien was me. Me being consistently one off. Me pretending. Me never fitting in but smiling nonetheless.

A notable amount of time passed before I discovered why I felt that way then and why that feeling never quite leaves me. But, knowing there is not only a word to identify this feeling but a community of souls in the world who understand it — well. I can be stubbornly alien now without the shame, the guilt, and the secret thoughts that maybe I’m crazy as a hoot owl.

I am wired 'different'

And, that’s okay because Coming to terms with being neurodiverse, forever oddly out of place, too loud, too quiet, too heavy, too weird, or simply too much for the space around me … is sanctuary. I can exhale and more importantly, I can be me.

Original Work: oil on 24×48 canvas