Lullaby to Kill the Nightmares

Lullaby to Kill the Nightmares: Graphite on cold press paper; 2101X1552—this piece takes on many personal forms for me. The quote by Dorothy Parker is tied to the Peggy Lee song—singing a beautiful lullaby to a child. I’ve experienced agonizing nightmares from a young age. At age seven, I had to have acupuncture performed regularly to help release the knots that would bind my body from nightmares and cripple me. It’s a norm for a child of abuse to give the abuser the childish characterization of a face to help fictionalize the abuser and make them less real. The face of my abuser took on the shape of a childlike Joker where a robotic superhero kept the nightmares at bay. The combination of the visual art mixed with the lullaby by Lee and quote by Parker proved to be therapeutic after a middle-of-the-night nightmare.