things are not well in this house

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aileen imperatrice

self portraits

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things are not well in this house

30” x 40” With this particular painting, I have a live installation of a chair hanging upside down by a rope marked with red, mirroring the painted image. This work is a little more general in experiencing negative memories. Representing visions of people who have hurt me, institutions that are not as well as you think behind the curtain. It’s a very rough textured piece, black gesso, outlines of whites and some reds and it’s purposely rough because it’s dealing with the roughness of going through some awful events, things that make us feel unwell. The chair being upside down, is for me at least a very obvious representation of when you feel completely uncomfortable, like your world has been turned upside down, and you’re hanging from a rope, out there on your own, not able to really talk about it with anybody. This relates back to the feeling where you have to hide something, you can’t really share it with anybody. You’re not really right with the world. The three crosses, which at first I felt just belonged there, symbolize many things. Religion is a part of my life; I’ve grown up in the Catholic religion, and interestingly enough I’ve also worked in the church for a number of years, and volunteered, including even presiding over a service myself. I was authorized to say the service for the congregation one evening when the priest was not available. A unique experience, I think I was the only female to do that, at least at that church anyway. And being on the inside of the religious business, you see a lot of things that most people just going to the masses on Sunday don’t really see and you get the feel for how much this really is a business, just like everything else. Like the art world is a business. But of course there’s a lot of passion, a lot of feeling and just like art and religion there’s a lot of levels of feeling for people personally. I wasn’t necessarily trying to make a point that specifically things are not well in the house of religion but it’s a part of it, and part of me. Just like other things, not everything is as great as you think it is on the outside, not everything is as smooth as you wished it to be. But they’re all parts of the experience. This painting relates to many of the issues that my husband I have had to deal with.
It’s funny, I’ve had a number of people that look at this work as a comedic piece they think the very line itself, “things are not well in this house” is funny, which is not what I thought of at all, but I’m intrigued they’re seeing it that way. I guess we have to laugh to keep from hurting. Some respond differently to pain.

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