Elisha Fields

"The underlying themes in my art are my lifelong search for Soul, God, Truth and Purpose."

(Artist's website, March 24, 2007)

"I painted this during a migraine and have suffered with them as long as I can remember. I am happy to relate any information that may be helpful. My husband is a psychiatrist and has helped me understand my symptums and enabled me to cut pain time from 5 days every two weeks to only suffering maybe two days within 2-3 months."

(Elisha Fields, Email to Klaus Podoll, March 27, 2007)

The painting "Migraine" is a story of pain and hope.

By Elisha Fields

When a migraine begins I become unable to function. However, at the time I created the painting, "Migraine," I hoped that painting could somehow ease my pain. My head feeling like it’s splitting, my eyeballs wanting to pop out of their sockets and lights inside my head like shooting stars at my peripheral, I gathered materials to sit and paint.

In the painting my face has melted away and the only thing left is one eyeball too large for the socket and being held in place by red veins and bursting blood vessels. My soul is being buried under mountains of heaviness that want to crush my spirit like an imaginary foot hidden on the top right of the mountains. The reds mixed into the mountains represent a feeling of bursting blood vessels, as though my brain was bleeding on the inside of my head. My eyeball feeling strangled peeks out from misery and pain. I look into the darkness below where I fear I am falling.

I place a small body of water connected to my eyeball representing who I am or was before the pain. I surround it by thick red for pain and helplessness. I become my eyeball dragging myself to wherever, trying desperately to remember life without pain.

Determined that there is hope, I place a blue sky on the top as though it's coming into the picture and I have to believe there are better days.

(Email to Klaus Podoll, March 28, 2007)