Shivering on a metal table

-- Mortality Series --
1200mm (w) x 1200mm (h) canvas.
5cm thick (double-thick canvas) and wrap around edging.
Acrylic, spray paint and ink on stretched primed canvas.
Signed and dated.
Ready to hang with d-rings and hanging wire on the back.
2022.
Each artwork comes with an essential oils card on the back which is infused with Revive ‘Courage’ oil. This is the oil my therapist gives me to help calm me down. It’s a beautiful blue which inspired the colour palette in the artworks.
 
The artworks represent the emotions I have moved through in the last ten months while investigating an abdominal tumour. The matt blue area symbolises the part of me that everyone sees. It’s my working life. My life on social media. The friends I see and hug and say ‘I’m doing great’. Everyone at the gym and basketball. The other side of the painting is my private life. My emotion and turmoil. It’s all the things I’m hiding and keeping to myself. It’s the fear of weakness and vulnerability. It’s what I don’t want my son to see. I don’t want him to see how scared I am. Typographically each work depicts the primary emotion I was feeling at the time: alone, empty and broken.
 
This is an original painting. Artwork comes with certificate of authenticity and Sarah Sculley promotional goods, professionally packed for shipping (included in price). If you live outside of Australia, please get in touch to discuss delivery options.
 
Synopsis
After the blood tests came the CT scan. Then the PET scan. Then another Ultra Sound. Then, my least favourite, the biopsy. A day procedure at the hospital. I was scared because the last biopsy I had as a kid I ended up with 5 different holes in my abdomen. I couldn’t stop shaking. They wheeled me into the surgery and asked me to walk over and lie down on the metal table. Lying on my stomach, I couldn’t see too much. I had a nurse keeping me company while six or so people moved around me. One placed a ‘map’ on me, another was in charge of sending me into the CT scan. The doctor with the biopsy needle. The nurse that kept reminding me to stay still. Someone gave me local anaesthetic and off we went. About 30 seconds in, I started thinking about how this could be the beginning of long year of metal tables, needles, being poked and cut. This could be the easy part and I’d have so much more suffering to come. When I had started crying in prep, the nurse had lovingly said to me ‘I know it’s scary. It’s the beginning of a long journey for most people.’ I didn’t want it to the beginning. I wanted this to be the end. Take your tumour samples and tell me it’s scar tissue. Then when I realised I could feel everything - like pac man eating my insides, I started panicking. I started sobbing and I made the decision that I didn’t want to do the biopsy anymore. When I told the nurse, the doctor announced he had finished. I lay there shaking and crying. When the doctor came to see me in recovery he said the samples looked like lymphoma. No one panic… it’s not lymphoma. But for a week I thought it was. For a week I researched the hell out of lymphoma. I cried. Then researched some more. I ate a very strict keto diet because of the positive cell growth research around low carb eating. So strict. I measured everything. It was the only thing I could control. Don’t do this people. I made myself very sick. Low carb, high anxiety, the physicality of mural painting and crossfit don’t mix.