Indiana Disability Justice showcases artwork by people with all kinds of disabilities. We are here. We are human. We matter. We want to be seen.
This is the work of. Emily West. Thank you, Emily, for showing your spirit!
(ArtMix offers avenues for people with disabilities to express themselves creativity- www.artmixindiana.org.)
Painting of blue flowers in a short red vase in front of a orange and yellow background
Current location: ArtMix
Size: w14.5”xh14.25”
Medium: Acrylic on canvas
Artist’s name: Emily West
Title: Floral Study
Date: 2019
My piece makes me feel happy. I love the details and I really love flowers. I really love painting pictures and it makes me feel relaxed and calm. I want people to feel happy when they look at my painting. I also hope they know how proud I am because this is one of my best paintings. It would look good in a really fancy frame.
Emily holding a self-portrait. Emily has short light brown hair, wearing earrings and a red sweatshirt.
About the Artist: Emily West
I was born in Indianapolis, Indiana on January 17, 1997. I am 24 years old. I went to Beech Grove High School and I live in Beech Grove with my parents and my dog, Sadie. My full name is Emily Suzanne West. I have two siblings, Megan and Rachel. Megan is married to Drew and my sister Rachel is going to get married soon. Her fiancée’s name is Brad. I started in Urban Artisans at ArtMix when I was in high school. I go to ArtMix two days per week. At ArtMix we usually work in clay, but I make my own artwork too. I like to make landscapes and portraits. I use pencil, paint, colored pencil and oil pastels. I also use an easel at home so I can paint. I have a drawing pad when I draw. I love art because I love the colors, designs and textures that I make. I have been practicing drawing a lot lately. I want to practice more sketching and paint pictures of cities, nature and people.
Painting. Textured background that is very rough to the touch, but you can see the grooves. The bottom left of the painting starts dark black and slowly transitions to dark purple and ombre effects into light colors at the top right corner. There is one lotus flower in the center, one to the left, and two to the left in the colors of pink and white. There are abstract blue and green lily pads to complete the aesthetic.
Painting Description: Textured background that is very rough to the touch, but you can see the grooves. The bottom left of the painting starts dark black and slowly transitions to dark purple and hombre effects into light colors at the top right corner. There is one lotus flower in the center, one to the left, and two to the left in the colors of pink and white. There are abstract blue and green lily pads to complete the aesthetic.
Lotus flowers, much like survivors of complex trauma, have learned to thrive in the most adverse of circumstances. These gorgeous specimens have reclaimed the concept of beauty and what it means to grow something lovely from filth, one that has become a beacon of light for my own healing journey. 15 years ago, I found myself caught in my own murky water and found my own way out 2 years later. Much like a lotus flower, I learned to thrive in the unkind world that helped to create the circumstances leading to my exploitation. One of the hardest lessons I ever had to learn during my 13 year recovery journey was to know when it is time to stop reliving the pain and to let myself heal and enjoy life. The voices of all my abusers past have faded as the years passed, and I slowly learned that I am worthy of love, acceptance, and happiness. They were so loud for so many years that even after I broke free from them, I still could not rid myself of their influence. You’re ugly. You are worthless. You will never find anyone else because no one wants to put up with you. You’ll never find a husband. God hates you. Everyone hates you. No one will help you. You don’t deserve to live. I think I was just afraid that if I let my pain go, I wouldn’t know where I came from or the kind of person I would become. I guess I was afraid that I would lose touch with my reality and forget that it even happened. But then it happened after several YEARS re-programming, re-defining, and re-learning what it means to thrive. I let my beautiful petals grow brighter and lovelier through each season of growth so that I could still have a life full of everything I thought I had lost. I decided I was worthy. Like a lotus, I fought through the murk and the mud to get to the light. And then I became my own light.
Charlie’s art is available for purchase at this link.
Charlie Quinn Tebow, LMSW, survivor, artist
Image description: Caucasian non-binary individual with a big smile in front of a brick building wearing my favorite tie-dye shirt. Wild styled short pixie cut blonde hair
Creator Bio: An alumnus of Washburn University with a clinical Masters of Social Work degree, Charlie dedicates their life to serving others like them, CPTSD (chronic post traumatic stress disorder) survivors. Their day job as a social worker and Missing Youth Specialist on the Kansas Special Response Team for Missing and Exploited Youth provides them with opportunities to empower and engage runaway and exploited youth in foster care to overcome complex and compounded trauma, and find the path to who they want to be. Charlie is a dedicated advocate with specializations for persons who have experienced human sex trafficking, commercial sexual exploitation, childhood trauma, interpersonal violence, and other complex or compounded traumas. Charlie is part of the LGBTQ community as a nonbinary person (they/them), and a staunch leader and participant in social justice activism. They are an ally for all trans and/or persons of color, as well as dedicated activist for Black Lives Matter and Trans Lives Matter movements. Charlie is a member of the National Human Trafficking Survivor Network and Survivor Leaders Institute, and has delivered keynote and training sessions to professionals from around the country. Charlie is also an accomplished artist and expert in the healing arts for survivors of complex trauma. Featuring bright colors and textures, their art has been featured in 35 states and sold to patrons from around the globe.
Joyful sweep is when the body is sweeping off of the surface. When you look at the image you cannot see the full body, but you see different pieces of limbs moving throughout the surface. There are small pockets of paint, mostly primary colors, coming together and depicting a human figure moving softly through the surface on a white background. Pencil markings are scribbling throughout the surface in the background. The figure is playing some type of sport almost as if he is playing soccer.
Freedom Dance
Freedom Dance is moving through the atmosphere without the effect of gravity. White and yellow are the most dominant colors throughout the surface. These colors create warmth throughout the painting.The figure is far to the upper right side of the canvas. Depicted in tan and maroon, the figure arches upward from the bottom right corner of the canvas towards the upper left corner. The figure stands on one leg with the other leg reaching out the side and arms stretched getting ready to fly.
Développé
Développé is when the body is transferring all the energy from within to the surrounding spectators. The delicate figure is mostly surrounded by a white surface. The figure with her leg stretched upwards is depicted in a peach and orange tulle skirt that explodes outwards to express the movement of the dancer. The main focus point of the painting is the center where all the movement originates. Her arms and hands are stretched upwards as if she is reaching for the sky.
About the Artist: Johnson Simon
A man with medium brown skin, with short black hair, wearing glasses, and smiling broadly in front of a white background.
I have always been interested in body movement and when an opportunity was presented to me to attend a dance recital exhibition nine years ago on the Western Michigan University campus, I was excited to attend. Viewing the dancers and their freedom of movement inspired me to display movement in my painting. I was stimulated to create my first dance focused expressionistic painting. Dancing is to me, the art of moving lightly and quickly with the skill of communicating my emotion. As someone with a disability, movement impacts me on a daily basis. In order to help gain more knowledge of motion and movement, I used several sources of movement for research and to enhance ideas. I watch several videos of dancing to help in determining the type of movement I wanted to present in my painting. I studied the movement of people: walking, running, swimming, and sky diving. I then had my own walking and stepping up and down stairways videotaped. I discovered that my walking has a rhythm to it. To further enhance my study of movement I attended several dancing classes to sketch the dancer’s movements for effect. My painting is a representation of me dancing. I am able to make broad and sweeping motions with my paint brush and transfer that motion and feeling of movement onto the canvas to express myself. In my artistic work, I am able to move freely about without limitations. I use bright colors to represent the body movement throughout the surface.
My artwork is a way for me to express or transfer how I would move freely and uninterrupted. I can run, walk, jump, and I can dance without being bound to limitations when I paint. Zm and draw. I believe the paint brush is an extension of me and represents my idea of movement on canvas.
Video Description: Against a dark background, white finger-like things appear at the top. As the music plays, the finger-like things crawl down the screen.
BiPolar to me feels like someone is reaching in my mind with their fingers and messing with my emotions, motivations, and behaviors. The dark represents my depression, and the light represents my mania.
The base of the Processing code was written by Dan Shiffman, http://patreon.com/codingtrain, in his forward kinematics lesson. The music “Dark Trailer” was downloaded with a free licence from Adobe Stock. The rest was written in Java, Processing, by me, Jayson Powers.
About the Author: Jayson Powers is a mathematician at heart who enjoys computer programming. He lives in Muncie, IN, where he is the primary caregiver of his wife with cerebral palsy.
