EDWIN'S PAINTINGS

This painting represents God looking down from heaven with sadness and compassion for all the pain and suffering in the world. It represents God’s desire for us to repair, heal, and transform the world and to correct injustice. In Judaism the concept of humanity’s shared responsibility to heal the world is called Tikkun Olam. This concept is a fundamental moral principal in modern Judaism.

This painting has many layers of meaning and symbolism, inspired by my father who painted while he was completely blind.

The tears represent sadness (mine and my fathers), and also represent my dad's pride & joy for inspiring me to create beautiful, meaningful, heartfelt therapeutic paintings, which have helped me mend my own broken heart and wounded spirit.

The beautiful orange yellow sunrise heralds a new day; a new chapter in our lives. The calm tranquil blue water in the ocean represents the vast deep intimacy Edwin and I shared together. Beginning with our submarine rides together in the pool, extending throughout our lives, water represents Edwin’s and my genuine deep mutual love and affection for each other. The tears create waves and ripples in the water which symbolize Edwin’s ongoing, reverberating impact on my life and psyche. His presence perpetually resonates in my life,

This painting represents the universal human experience of suffering with

emotional pain & heartbreak. We all sustain loss of loved ones, experience

grief, sadness, and pain which creates emptiness inside us and a longing to

reconnect.

We are each individually responsible for healing our own heartbreak, for

our own emotional healing. We are each capable of acquiring the tools and

skills to mend our own wounded hearts.

This painting symbolizes my locked up, deep emotional torment and the

fears which arose from the emotional and physical abuse during my childhood

and adolescence. I hated the abuse which I encountered and perpetually tried

to escape. I endured the abuse of my father and family, and I loved them even

though I was wounded, confused, and appalled by their behavior. This painting

represents my fears of being eternally bullied, punished, abused, tormented,

and persecuted.

The crucified tuna fish is roasting in an emotional hell, nailed to the cross,

and has a nail painfully impaled through the eye. The helpless limp tuna fish

is sad, suffering, and numb; restrained and in shock; yet is stoically surviving

and enduring the pain. The tuna’s world is literally turned upside down. The

nail through the eye represents the suffering and pain I endured due to my

father’s blindness and abuse.

The tuna symbolizes me. Tuna fish was my favorite food when I was a child.

I loved to eat tuna fish sandwiches so much that my mom Judy used to kid me

that she was going to change my middle name and call me Curtis “Tuna Fish”

Dickman.

It is paradoxical that I am nailed to a cross in the painting because I am

Jewish. The painting symbolizes my prior religious ambivalence and my

rejection of Judaism as a teenager. As a teen, I saw documentary movies of

the Holocaust which depicted the horrendous torture and murder of Jews in

European concentration camps. I was aghast and profoundly frightened by

the vivid movie images of starving Jews, mountains of Jewish corpses, mass

graves, gas chambers and crematoriums. I was hypersensitive to these images

because of my childhood abuse and my preexisting strong fears of persecution,

torture, and suffering. As I watched the movie, I felt overwhelmed with fear

and thought “If this is what the world does to Jews, then I don’t want to be a Jew

any longer”. I subsequently tried to suppress my Jewish identity and abandoned

going to synagogue. As I grew older, I still enjoyed celebrating Jewish holidays

with my parents, siblings, wife, and children, and retained an affinity for my

cultural heritage. After beginning psychotherapy and confronting my issues

later in life, I returned to synagogue with my children, and fully shared my

Jewish culture and religion with my children and family.

The nail through the eye also symbolizes the pain my father’s blindness caused him, me, and my family.

This painting represents addiction and the destructive process of selfmedicating

with alcohol or drugs. Painful feelings are difficult to process.

Addictions work temporarily to deny or avoid acknowledging painful feelings

by numbing the brain and disconnecting the awareness of emotional pain.

Self-medicating is an unproductive, unhealthy, destructive coping mechanism

which never permits effective acknowledgement or processing of the

underlying feelings. The brain is injured by chronic abuse, like having a frontal

lobotomy. Meanwhile, the melting Daliesque clock depicts time ticking away,

as the anonymous individual avoids the opportunity for emotional healing

and recovery.

This painting was inspired by my frustration and heartbreak over my

brother and sisters’ self-destructive addictions. Andrew and Dana each died

prematurely from the combined effects of drug abuse, cigarette smoking, and

compulsive eating disorders. I tried to help them but was ineffective; they

never fully embraced my attempts to intervene.

I painted this cathartic piece while I listened to loud Led Zeppelin music.

I painted rapidly, from my “gut”, using palate knives and acrylic paints. The

painting was deeply emotional, emanating from my subconscious, unlike the

meticulously planned and laboriously executed technical paintings which I

previously painted. I was not assigned a particular topic or subject matter, but

was instructed to crank up the music loudly, spontaneously paint “from the

heart” and “see what happens”.

The results astounded me and provided plenty of material to discuss in

my therapy. My painting portrayed a dramatic episode of torture and abuse

which my parents inflicted upon me when I was a teenager. My feelings and

thoughts were screaming to be released from my subconscious, where I had

kept my painful memories of this devastating trauma locked away for decades.

I had not adequately processed my “rape”. I suffered from post-traumatic stress

disorder (PTSD).

This painting portrays my parents violently, forcefully, cutting off my hair

when I was 14. They held me down and shaved my head completely bald,

against my protests. They raped my sense of identity and stole my innocence.

They literally and figuratively amputated my connections with my teenage

peers.

The colors and forms are symbolic. My body is depicted by my favorite color

purple. My mother Judy, depicted by her favorite color orange, is lying on top

of me; her body and her tentacle like arms are forcing me down on the ground,

restraining me, entrapping me. Judy was a conspirator and accomplice to my

rape. My bald shaven black head is painfully disconnected from my body,

suspended in space and time. My mind and body are numb, stunned by the

violent assault. I am overwhelmed by my simultaneous feelings of sadness,

helplessness, impotence, fear, loathing, anger, and contempt which were

invoked by this violation.

I am alone, isolated, and helpless; sucked into the vortex of a tornado, against

my will. The central red tornado represents my father Edwin’s dominating

power, fury, vengeance, viciousness, and destruction as he orchestrated and

enacted my rape.

The green hatchet protruding externally from my skull is partially buried

within my head. The symbols depicting my words are indecipherable. The

(Figure 14) Rape of Adolescent Innocence hatchet concretely symbolizes my baldness as my personal “Scarlet letter”;

I painted this cathartic piece while I listened to loud Led Zeppelin music.

I painted rapidly, from my “gut”, using palate knives and acrylic paints. The

painting was deeply emotional, emanating from my subconscious, unlike the

meticulously planned and laboriously executed technical paintings which I

previously painted. I was not assigned a particular topic or subject matter, but

was instructed to crank up the music loudly, spontaneously paint “from the

heart” and “see what happens”.

The results astounded me and provided plenty of material to discuss in

my therapy. My painting portrayed a dramatic episode of torture and abuse

which my parents inflicted upon me when I was a teenager. My feelings and

thoughts were screaming to be released from my subconscious, where I had

kept my painful memories of this devastating trauma locked away for decades.

I had not adequately processed my “rape”. I suffered from post-traumatic stress

disorder (PTSD).

This painting portrays my parents violently, forcefully, cutting off my hair

when I was 14. They held me down and shaved my head completely bald,

against my protests. They raped my sense of identity and stole my innocence.

They literally and figuratively amputated my connections with my teenage

peers.

The colors and forms are symbolic. My body is depicted by my favorite color

purple. My mother Judy, depicted by her favorite color orange, is lying on top

of me; her body and her tentacle like arms are forcing me down on the ground,

restraining me, entrapping me. Judy was a conspirator and accomplice to my

rape. My bald shaven black head is painfully disconnected from my body,

suspended in space and time. My mind and body are numb, stunned by the

violent assault. I am overwhelmed by my simultaneous feelings of sadness,

helplessness, impotence, fear, loathing, anger, and contempt which were

invoked by this violation.

I am alone, isolated, and helpless; sucked into the vortex of a tornado, against

my will. The central red tornado represents my father Edwin’s dominating

power, fury, vengeance, viciousness, and destruction as he orchestrated and

enacted my rape.

The green hatchet protruding externally from my skull is partially buried

within my head. The symbols depicting my words are indecipherable. The

(Figure 14) Rape of Adolescent Innocence hatchet concretely symbolizes my baldness as my personal “Scarlet letter”;

This painting depicts the emotional processes associated with the universal

human experiences of grieving for the loss of loved ones. The four rectangular

shapes represent the discrete phases of shock and denial, anger, sadness,

acceptance, and bargaining. Each rectangular phase has its own predominant

colors which are reflective of the emotions and experiences which dominate

each stage.

The shapes and forms, however, are not all discrete or fully appreciated at

first glance. There are triangular or pyramidal shapes, upright and inverted,

which represent simultaneously experiencing different emotions, such as

denial and anger; anger and sadness; sadness, and acceptance.

There is a central path which winds through the course of grieving. A

path that is followed in the processing of the experience. The lightning bolt

represents prominent sharp stabbing emotional pain and anguish. There are

different shades of the blue colors; each shade represents a different depth and

intensity of sadness.

The eclipse of the sun and the moon represent denial, but also symbolizes

other things. The sun and the moon symbolize heavenly, divine, &/or natural

processes; things we have no control over. The eclipse also represents grief

triggering innate unconscious processes in which loss generates reactions

and feelings that we are unable to control. Grief is an automated inherited

neurological process that all humans experience. It is hard-wired into our

brains.

The permanency of this image reminds us that we never completely stop

grieving for our loved ones who have passed. We never stop missing them.

The intensity of grief and the feelings may diminish with time; however, they

never completely disappear.

Each subsequent loss cumulatively resurrects these feelings and processes.