Living With Edwin

Living With EdwinLiving With EdwinLiving With Edwin

Living With Edwin

Living With EdwinLiving With EdwinLiving With Edwin
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EDWIN'S PAINTINGS

NIGHTTIME BEACH LANDSCAPE PAINTING.

HEAVEN OVER THE OCEAN 

SUNRISE OVER MONUMENT VALLEY

WEST MAUI MOUNTAINS

BOOK ARTWORK


    TEARS FROM HEAVEN

    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,

    i surrender

    I SURRENDER

    This painting was based on a real life episode when I nearly drowned in an ocean swim after being pounded by a 25 foot wave. I prayed to god to spare my life and after what seemed like an eternity my outstretched hands emerged from the dark cold water and I gasped for air. This is one of the poignant paintings and stories in the book Living with Edwin.

    cardiac bypass

    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.

    the many faces of ptsd

    Find out more

    the thinker

    leap of faith

    This painting was inspired by a frightening dream where I was plummeting into a deep abyss. I prayed to god to save my life . I immediately stopped falling. I become suspended in mid air, floating peacefully just a few feet from the ground. 

    The dream symbolizes surrendering my desire to control events,  and to relinquish  control to a higher power.

    crucifixion of the tuna fish

    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.

    the monster toothbrush

    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.

    a bottle in front of me or a frontal lobotomy ?

    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'll keep an eye out 4 u

    Eyes are recurrent important symbols in my artwork. They can represent

    the preciousness of sight, the emotional pain of developing blindness, denial,

    the inability to see or recognize certain issues; the gifts of insight, knowledge,

    compassion and understanding. It also symbolizes “God’s Eye” a comforting

    loving perspective from a higher power

    walking barefoot in their shoes

    unchain my heart

    rape of adolescent innocence

    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”;


    you're so blind u can't see zeus's lightening bolt

    I painted this canvas while wearing a blindfold as a tribute to my father

    Edwin, for my own catharsis. My wounded heart is central in the painting; it

    is painfully impaled by a corkscrew and pierced by a lightning bolt. There is

    a large blood stain on the left emanating from my heart. The eye represents

    my father’s literal and figurative blindness. It represents his inability to see the

    impact that his emotional and physical abuse had on my heart, my feelings,

    and my psyche. The dark and gold backgrounds represent my simultaneous

    existence within diametrically opposed universes; my yin and yang life

    realties as an adolescent; like my father’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde behavior, his

    rationality and irrationality; his normalcy and pathology; his lovingness and

    rage.

    rape of adolescent innocence

    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”;


    the lock box. emotional abandonment

    This painting used black and gold background colors. It represents a map

    of my psyche; it contains sharply demarcated, well contained, conscious (gold

    area) and unconscious worlds (black area). It also represents my external

    appearance to other people, and the self which I keep hidden from view.

    The golden half of the picture represents my consciousness and the external

    image I project to the world. The square yellow area with the rainbow

    represents my neatly packaged conscious perfectionism and my ego. This part

    of my world is beautiful, luminous, bright, and colorful. The bright vivid colors

    represent my success, triumphs, talents, achievements, and service to others.

    Everything in this part of my life looks extraordinary and wonderful from

    the outside or at the conscious level. There is beauty, competence, stability,

    excellence, security, satisfaction, and happiness which is present and is visible

    externally to the surrounding world.

    The black half of the painting represents the coexisting dark gloomy

    universe within my subconscious. It is not illuminated, is kept beneath the

    shiny surface, and is hidden from the view of my consciousness and from

    other people. This is a dismal part of my psychic world where anxiety, fear,

    shame, and anger reside. It is repressed and inaccessible.

    The square blue area is deep beneath the surface, within the darkest and

    deepest recesses of my mind. It represents my basement or lock box, where

    I stuff and hide my sensitive feelings and thoughts in the repressed area of

    my subconscious. The Blue box with the X represents my danger zone, where

    I lock up and store my demons, my ultrasensitive issues and wounds. It is

    a “no man’s land” where my unacceptable feelings are imprisoned in my

    maximum security “penitentiary”. The shaded blue stripes and background

    colors represent different depths of the prominent feelings of sadness. The

    red represents anger, pain, and frustration. The lock represents the secure

    barrier to restrain these demons, so they are unable to escape. The key in the

    lock represents hope and a viable, visible mechanism to release the pent up,

    untamed, threatening, wild monsters from their lair.

    geometric stages of grief

    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.

    TEARS FROM HEAVEN

    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,

    Copyright © 2023 Living With Edwin - All Rights Reserved.

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