Sugar Skulls That Look Within
Why I love to paint them…
I think sugar skulls are pretty popular, and I love the kind that look like intricately decorated generic skulls, and the ones that look like portraits.
Sugar skulls aren’t just beautiful to look at- they have cultural significance also. Some Hispanic cultures celebrate Dia de los Muertos- or Day of the Dead, by decorating and building altars. This is different from Halloween, though it is celebrated November 1st and 2nd each year. During Dia de los Muertos, the belief is that souls of the departed return to Earth, briefly.
https://www.mexicanmuseum.org/dia-de-los-muertos
Although I do not celebrate Day of the Dead, as I have my own religious practices as a Baptist, I respect and admire the love and remembrance of those that have lived their lives and have gone before us. I feel that death is not just grief for those of us that are living to endure, but a remembrance of the love we had and a reminder to enjoy the present. As generations pass away, I am reminded that each time their souls cross over into eternity, a living piece of history is lost.
My great grandmother lived through the Great Depression, and lived in a world that I will never live in. With her gone, I have no first hand accounts to listen to about a significant period in time. I wonder what stories will die with me one day?
When I paint my sugar skulls, I often paint them with asymmetrically designed faces. I remember selling my artwork at a pop up event a while back, and someone stopped to admire one of my drawings. She loved that one side of her face (my self portrait actually) was brightly decorated, and the other side was decorated in shadows. She then told me that she had been raped in the past, and felt that she was left scarred, but still whole- almost as if she had two sides to herself internally that made up one puzzle. She was interested in a self portrait of herself, similar to the one she admired, to represent her past trauma and present growth.
Isn’t that how life is sometimes? The longer we live, the more internal scars we get, and grow around. Some of us get deeper or more significant scars than others, but we all have burdens to bear.
We all have life experiences and genetics that make up the puzzle of who we become. The parts of my life as a first responder has given me new puzzle pieces that parts of my life as a mom didn’t, and vice versa. I have grown around stress, grief, health issues, financial issues, and keep growing.
It’s so easy to look within ourselves, and so hard to look within other people as well. Sometimes I wonder, if our scars were visible, would we treat each other better?
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