Hot Pink Getaway
The first and last time I wrote about my art, I was in school. This was always a very difficult task, getting through school, because you have to write and I had shifted the power of my voice from writing into painting because I wanted to convey a message that I found was failed by words. A picture is worth a thousand words and more. Most of my writing before was poetry, anyway, which is a type of painting with words. Anyway, because I didn’t want to write about them, I didn’t feel I was painting my real paintings in school. I painted academic paintings that could fit into the words I had to write for them. I was afraid of painting my real paintings. There was a disconnect I felt between myself and my work, the same way I felt a disconnect between myself and myself. It took three years of hardcore treatment for my PTSD after school was over for me to be able to start reconnecting, to feel connected again to my self and my work.
Before I went back to school (sometime before 2010), I read a book called The Alphabet vs. the Goddess by Leonard Schlain, that explained how the practice of writing and reading changed our brains to be more left-dominant, and we forgot how to communicate in some other significant ways. This seemed to be what I was looking for. I was much more interested in these right-brained ways of seeing, thinking, processing, and communicating. I didn’t want to try to understand that from a left-brain dominant perspective, but to actually get inside of and think from a different framework. I knew that if I could do that, I would access a great, dormant power inside of me and wake it up. I knew that if I could do it, I could show other people how to do it, too.
In early 2022, at SUNY Orange where I teach studio art classes to young adults, I was asked by the gallery director if I would do a solo show at the Mindy Ross Gallery on the Newburgh campus. She was very surprised when I put together a thoughtful show with a theme, and not too much work crammed up on the walls. Every piece exhibited went into that show with thought and care, in support of a story being told. A story without words.
Today, on my 44th birthday, the thing I feel like doing this morning is trying to write words about my recent solo show, Hot Pink Getaway. It’s hard. The feelings in these paintings are ineffable. But, something in me wants to try. I was asked to do this show, and I had just been in my new studio in Newburgh for about three months at that time. Rather than being the open workspace it should have been, it became a safe house for me to escape the increasingly undeniable and inescapable domestic abuse I was experiencing due to being stuck in close quarters with a significantly unhealthy person during COVID. I bought a mini-fridge just so I could have a place to store groceries and eat in peace. At home, my groceries would be hidden from me, my presence in the kitchen preparing my own food always a problem, my joining the dinner table of someone else’s prepared food always an excuse to start an argument with me. I developed severe GI issues, was on the verge of having to go for some very nasty surgeries, issues that all cleared up quite magically when I was able to eat by myself in a peaceful environment. It became increasingly clear what the source of all my health problems was. I was not given much time to put this show together. My studio was a mess, full of objects, books, precious heirlooms and blankets and things that had nothing to do with the messy flow of oil painting that should have been going on in there. The pieces of my life I was saving from destruction.
I had very little time to put a show together, maybe a week or two before they wanted it up in the gallery. Luckily, the gallery is only a block away from my studio. I started shuffling things out of the way, trying to clear out the space, and started un-stacking paintings and setting them up in a row around the room. I noticed that I seemed to favor a lot of hot pink tones over the years. I started to wonder why. I have been thinking about it for awhile.
The Newburgh studio was first my safe space of healing and re-regulating, before it was able to become my painting studio. That very concrete reality of the moment in early 2022, along with all the hot pink color around me, inspired the name for my show. Living a somewhat normal existence of not being bullied, having my time stolen or things broken, for days in a row, felt as luxurious as being on vacation! "Hot Pink Getaway" became the name for my show.
I was going through some old photos the other day, remembering the first time I went to Italy. It was a study-abroad summer semester as an undergrad in 2016. We were studying the influence of the Ancient Greeks in Southern Italy, and were moving around the coast of Sicily and the sole of the boot for many weeks. My suitcase broke while we were in Naples, and I had to miss class one day to go buy a new one. My professor put me on a train by myself, and I remember standing on the platform feeling terrified. Shaking from head to toe. I am sure I had undiagnosed/untreated PTSD already at that point that was making me a nightmare to travel with, and if anyone on that trip at that time ever reads this, please accept my heartfelt apology for not knowing what was wrong with me then or how to regulate it. So, even with my adequate if not conversational command of the Italian language, I felt terrified to go into a foreign city completely alone. Naples is a scary place. There are army tanks on street corners, soldiers standing around with AK-47’s, casually minding the traffic.
When I finally got to this suitcase store in the city, I soothed myself by practicing my Italian with the shopkeep, Carmine. He was so nice to me, and I appreciate his patience as I botched his name and spoke bad Italian to him. As I searched through the suitcases, I noticed one that was hot pink in color. He said that one had been there for a long time, because no one wanted such a ridiculous color. I bought that suitcase. Later, my professor told me how proud she was of me for going into a foreign city alone to get myself a new suitcase, and she compared the bold color of hot pink to my bravery.
When I got back into the states, sometime later on in the year I needed a new purse. On selecting a new purse for myself: I can’t speak for other purse-carrying persons, but for me it is a significant piece of my fashion statement. It speaks to who I am. I bought the hottest pink-purple leather tote bag I could find, to match my hot pink suitcase, because this color was now a statement of the new person I had become. Someone who is brave and bold and goes after their life.
Andrea Pacione
December 23, 2022 (on my 44th birthday)
Before I went back to school (sometime before 2010), I read a book called The Alphabet vs. the Goddess by Leonard Schlain, that explained how the practice of writing and reading changed our brains to be more left-dominant, and we forgot how to communicate in some other significant ways. This seemed to be what I was looking for. I was much more interested in these right-brained ways of seeing, thinking, processing, and communicating. I didn’t want to try to understand that from a left-brain dominant perspective, but to actually get inside of and think from a different framework. I knew that if I could do that, I would access a great, dormant power inside of me and wake it up. I knew that if I could do it, I could show other people how to do it, too.
In early 2022, at SUNY Orange where I teach studio art classes to young adults, I was asked by the gallery director if I would do a solo show at the Mindy Ross Gallery on the Newburgh campus. She was very surprised when I put together a thoughtful show with a theme, and not too much work crammed up on the walls. Every piece exhibited went into that show with thought and care, in support of a story being told. A story without words.
Today, on my 44th birthday, the thing I feel like doing this morning is trying to write words about my recent solo show, Hot Pink Getaway. It’s hard. The feelings in these paintings are ineffable. But, something in me wants to try. I was asked to do this show, and I had just been in my new studio in Newburgh for about three months at that time. Rather than being the open workspace it should have been, it became a safe house for me to escape the increasingly undeniable and inescapable domestic abuse I was experiencing due to being stuck in close quarters with a significantly unhealthy person during COVID. I bought a mini-fridge just so I could have a place to store groceries and eat in peace. At home, my groceries would be hidden from me, my presence in the kitchen preparing my own food always a problem, my joining the dinner table of someone else’s prepared food always an excuse to start an argument with me. I developed severe GI issues, was on the verge of having to go for some very nasty surgeries, issues that all cleared up quite magically when I was able to eat by myself in a peaceful environment. It became increasingly clear what the source of all my health problems was. I was not given much time to put this show together. My studio was a mess, full of objects, books, precious heirlooms and blankets and things that had nothing to do with the messy flow of oil painting that should have been going on in there. The pieces of my life I was saving from destruction.
I had very little time to put a show together, maybe a week or two before they wanted it up in the gallery. Luckily, the gallery is only a block away from my studio. I started shuffling things out of the way, trying to clear out the space, and started un-stacking paintings and setting them up in a row around the room. I noticed that I seemed to favor a lot of hot pink tones over the years. I started to wonder why. I have been thinking about it for awhile.
The Newburgh studio was first my safe space of healing and re-regulating, before it was able to become my painting studio. That very concrete reality of the moment in early 2022, along with all the hot pink color around me, inspired the name for my show. Living a somewhat normal existence of not being bullied, having my time stolen or things broken, for days in a row, felt as luxurious as being on vacation! "Hot Pink Getaway" became the name for my show.
I was going through some old photos the other day, remembering the first time I went to Italy. It was a study-abroad summer semester as an undergrad in 2016. We were studying the influence of the Ancient Greeks in Southern Italy, and were moving around the coast of Sicily and the sole of the boot for many weeks. My suitcase broke while we were in Naples, and I had to miss class one day to go buy a new one. My professor put me on a train by myself, and I remember standing on the platform feeling terrified. Shaking from head to toe. I am sure I had undiagnosed/untreated PTSD already at that point that was making me a nightmare to travel with, and if anyone on that trip at that time ever reads this, please accept my heartfelt apology for not knowing what was wrong with me then or how to regulate it. So, even with my adequate if not conversational command of the Italian language, I felt terrified to go into a foreign city completely alone. Naples is a scary place. There are army tanks on street corners, soldiers standing around with AK-47’s, casually minding the traffic.
When I finally got to this suitcase store in the city, I soothed myself by practicing my Italian with the shopkeep, Carmine. He was so nice to me, and I appreciate his patience as I botched his name and spoke bad Italian to him. As I searched through the suitcases, I noticed one that was hot pink in color. He said that one had been there for a long time, because no one wanted such a ridiculous color. I bought that suitcase. Later, my professor told me how proud she was of me for going into a foreign city alone to get myself a new suitcase, and she compared the bold color of hot pink to my bravery.
When I got back into the states, sometime later on in the year I needed a new purse. On selecting a new purse for myself: I can’t speak for other purse-carrying persons, but for me it is a significant piece of my fashion statement. It speaks to who I am. I bought the hottest pink-purple leather tote bag I could find, to match my hot pink suitcase, because this color was now a statement of the new person I had become. Someone who is brave and bold and goes after their life.
Andrea Pacione
December 23, 2022 (on my 44th birthday)
Naples, Italy. Summer 2016.
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Naples, Italy. Summer 2016.
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