Time moves slowly as I lay still is an abstract nonlinear comic that explores ideas around grief, isolation and accessibility.
This piece explores my relationship with the temporal non linear nature of disability, chronic illness and healing.

The process of grieving one’s health is an especially isolating one. When you’re sick you grieve alone, it’s like grieving the loss of a loved one only that loved one is you. All your hopes, dreams, goals and who you used to be are forever altered. You don’t get to forget for a moment because the illness and pain in your body is a constant reminder. Only you don’t receive the support and community that occurs when there is a death, because to them you are still living. Not only is it emotionally isolating but with my illness I physically have to be alone in a quiet dark space to rest; too sick to read or look at a screen, but also too sick to sleep.

Grief, healing, and illness are all non linear experiences that are constantly fluctuating. I wanted the viewer to read this comic in a similar way. I approached this series from a more illustrative lens than I would typically approach paintings. I used positive and negative shapes of the same forms to express the loss of joy and access to joy that happened when I became ill. The negative shapes represent “ghosts” of what could have been. Through the repetitive use of these defined forms and painted veils abstracting the viewer’s eye I aim to produce a feeling of inaccessible barriers. 

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We’re so pleased to have Kirsten’s show up now as part of VanCAF 2022 and to have it be the first thing guests will see when they enter the Roundhouse! Thanks so mucb to Sarah at the Roundhouse, Jessica Delisle and Cole Pauls for installation and Kirsten for putting together such a stunning exhibit. Time moves slowly as I lay still will be on display in The Window Gallery at the Roundhouse until the end of July so maker sure you stop by and see it!