Jodi Bonassi - Free Of Twists And Turns

mixed media on plywood

In the center you see my faces. My outer face is the good patient being wheeled around and stuck with needles. “No, that’s fine, that’s OK. I want the nurses to be OK with me. and The other face you see is scared and anesthetized and in those dreams. A tree and the branches are being cut off and the sap is drained out, lopsided and groaning in all directions. Blue tears fall and cover the floor but no one sees it. The janitor mops them up and the nurse adjust my IV. The branches are up and down but no, they’re my arms and grotesques. The gauze in the upper part of the painting facing you is my suffocation but not annihilation. I pretend to breathe. To create each painting in this Surgical series:I draw my images on the plywood (mostly from imagination), using photos of myself loosely just for my facial features. Then I paint with acrylics, adding materials from surgical procedures that I have had and then again paint into some of the areas. These are emotionally driven works, a self portrait about my body. I did not really desire to show these works until now as it is an intimate exploration of the hidden parts of me.