ARTIST STATEMENT
“Return to Self” is a digital self-portrait collage that represents trauma recovery. After experiencing a few back-to-back major life disruptions, I had trouble recognizing myself and longed for “the old me.” The process of recovery has involved learning acceptance and compassion for the parts of myself who fought to keep me afloat in whatever ways they could.
This portrait utilizes watercolor textures and the “Seigaiha” pattern, associated with Japanese Buddhism, collaged onto the photographed figure and drawn into the background. They reference a Buddhist teaching about the inevitability of death. It says that as a wave forms, it rises, crests, falls, and returns to the ocean. That wave existed and will never exist again. But that wave has always been part of the ocean and will always be part of the ocean. It has changed and nothing has changed about it.
I’ve learned that returning to myself doesn’t mean going back. The wave that folds on itself doesn’t return to the ocean at the place where it started. It takes itself forward and brings what’s behind with it.
As I recover, I reconnect with the versions of myself that were once new. I reach back to collect their wisdom and grasp onto their love, bringing them into the present, preparing to carry them into the future.
As I move forward, I bring myself with me.
I return to myself – different and unchanged.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
JaVon L. Townsend is a narrative artist whose work centers love, joy, and connection. She is a storyteller who uses words and images to help celebrate the beauty and full humanity, primarily, of Black and Brown people. Her artwork is primarily figurative, working across media, and is often seeking to bridge the personal with the universal.
JaVon is formally trained as a Licensed Clinical Social Worker, supporting people from diverse backgrounds in re-telling their own stories through utilizing the creative arts in healing work. Before entering the field of Social Work, JaVon completed a BA in International Languages and Cultures at St. Mary’s College of Maryland. JaVon has demonstrated ingenuity and resourcefulness in developing and executing creative approaches to working with diverse groups of people as an Albert Schweitzer Fellow in Baltimore City, MD and as a J. William Fulbright Research Program alumna in Accra, Ghana. She approaches all of her work from the lens of understanding and appreciating who people are within their specific contexts.
© JaVon L. Townsend