Elise Glick

Healing
lithograph

These prints explore part of an emotional journey that has helped me heal from the wounds of sexual assault. Printmaking and its labor intensiveness have been my therapy and emotional self-medication that ease the discomfort I’ve experienced over the past year. The work attempts to show the general heaviness carried around and re-examination of self. For example, I enlarged a porcelain saltshaker in the shape of a young Dutch girl carrying a yolk with heavy water buckets into a four-foot by three-foot woodcut. The four prints are aligned as a set, each one subtly different. Juxtaposed on their skirts is an image of two hunters taking aim at three beautiful geese in flight.

The prints I created early on my journey were darker. Angry. Over a year now, my prints have grown from the richness I’ve gained by regularly attending Sexual Assault Group Therapy with other women my age. The colors reflect sincere contemplation with mild contrast: dull peaches and mint greens accented with flame red. By combining provocative imagery with these colors, I can show the delicacy and strength that recovery requires. By finding my own visual metaphors, I tell my version of the story.

© Elise Glick