Artist's statement: THE SEASONS OF MY DISCONTENT - Cynnocence, her bipolar disorder and creativity It is winter, and all around is white, sterile, frozen. My chest is tight and frozen, limbs too heavy to lift. My hand clutches an empty brush and it scratches its way dry and empty across my canvas. No painting, no image, no design, since there is no energy, no fuel and no fire. This is the winter of my mood disorder and the cave in which my spirit hides, sleeping, till spring. It is spring. My chest expands and I begin to breathe again. The warmth and freshness of the air draws me out of my cave, though reluctant, I take the first footprints into my life again. The brush I clutch in both hands and touch the canvas, fresh and wonderful in front of me. The wash of orange and yellow, the golden trees and nutbrown sparrows. The texture of the paint on my hands and my face feels comforting. Footsteps ahead into the clearing, meters from the cave’s opening It is summer and I smell, I see, I hear, I taste and I touch, oh do I touch. My summer mania, I have stripped myself bare and I paint whirly cues on my body. The drops of brilliant crimson paint drip from my lips and I touch them feeling the heat of their message. I dance and dance and dance and never ever drop. There is such joy and wonderance in the summertime. The rush of the heart that lives and the fire in my very soul. Nothing too hard, too fear, too dangerous. I blink and I am on the TransCanada , flitting between truck traffic. I love summer there is no fear. It is fall and I lay fallen at the side of the road. My body is covered with the mud of realization and although I find myself sculpting anxiously with my pallet knife, the rain continues to flatten my every attempt for life. Crawling on my belly, toward my cave, from experience I know that the winter comes. It is winter...