©Lianne Morgan Leaving the Reborn 2021 1m x 1.5m Acrylic on Canvas
In March 2020, just before the whole world experienced Covid 19 lockdowns, I had to have emergency surgery on my cervical spine to stop me from becoming paralyzed from the neck down. I was in total shock from being told I would become paralyzed if I didn’t have surgery, and I wasn’t functioning well emotionally or physically. Three years before this operation I had gone through a turbulent Divorce and both my children and myself were experiencing trauma and feelings of the roots of our stability being removed. From 2017 until the present 2024, it has been years of destruction and reconstruction and this was happening within my body as well as my surrounding environment.
The operation was a success but as I have started to realise throughout my life, everything has its price and the price I was paying for not being paralyzed was being given the most horrific electric shocks and spasms that would rip throughout my body for hours at a time. I decided I was going to sketch, dance, and sing my way through them because these activities release my happy chemicals, dopamine, and this natural accruing chemical is a great healer.
Whilst the spasms were taking place I wasn’t able to make conscious decisions about what I was putting on the paper, so the sketch I used for the main painting, definitely came from a part of my subconscious mind.
In November 2020, Wales had just come out of the second lockdown period, and I was the proud owner of an amazing studio space in the Centre of Cardiff. After having a major life shock and realising we’re not here as a dress rehearsal I started doing what I love every day, or at least when my body allowed me to. I revisited the sketch, which I have now called Leaving the Reborn and I began painting the large 1000mm x 1500mm canvas.
I prepped a large canvas 1m x 1.5m because I want the painting to be overpowering and make the viewer feel small in comparison. As I began to put paint and color onto the canvas I became aware that these were purposeful decisions being made, such as wanting to paint the woman as a flat image and encase her in black.
The three fish are symbolic of energies that were present in my life at that time, I feel I’m speaking my truth and these energies move further away. Their eyes are closed because they cannot see what’s happening. The cage in my neck is what I have had fitted and I feel like I am just my neck and spine, I am not feeling anything else other than the electric lines you see in the sketch. I am interested in the childish manner that I used to sketch this in and I feel like my inner child was at work with this particular piece, as this is not at all my regular style.
The black space within the painting began to become very significant, this is where I feel all the emotions and toxic energy is held. A focus and belief that the negative space is where most energetic activity happens is a common belief and thread throughout most of my work. I began to build up texture and movement within the strokes of the black and also played with a matt and gloss finish. My objective was to create how we as humans can let the external emotions that sit within our environment bounce off us or we can become sponge-like and absorb all energies, I feel I show this through the different black tones, matt, gloss, and movement of strokes.
