Robyn Miller
Right Through Me by Robyn Miller
This past year has been a roller coaster of emotions. There have been lots of challenges I’ve been faced with and overcome. My mental health went through a lot, as I’m sure most people did as well. I used this piece to reflect my mental health this past year. This is a conversation that I believe is important to have.
I’ve learned a lot about myself, and I’ve realized how quickly I’ve grown up, which is a scary thought because it feels like my childhood ended in a snap. In quarantine, I started using a social media app called Tik Tok a lot. I use to see videos of things that would bring back memories we forgot from our childhood, and it got me thinking about how quickly life passes by with covid and seeing so much death that got me thinking about how tomorrow isn’t promised.
From the outside, I started to live life to the fullest and have a positive outlook on it, but internally I was still struggling with the world I lived in. At times I felt very strong, and at other times I felt fragile, especially being surrounded by so much death. I was very thankful that people close to me were healthy and safe, but I still would have in the back of my mind that my life could change in an instance and this thought at times takes a toll on someone.
In this 24” x 24” plexiglass piece, I have visually displayed this struggle. I used the middle self-portrait to represent my mental health. The use of plexiglass is to represent looking through myself. I think it’s essential to bring up the conversation about mental health during this pandemic. Many people don’t talk about the effects the pandemic has had on them, and I think everyone has been affected by it at some point in time. Life isn’t black and white and for a while, I thought everything was black and white, which it is not. I decided to use plexiglass as the background because as life moves on, I will face something different, so the background constantly changes. However, for this piece, I chose to put it on top of a painting of people.
Everyone is navigating through life, and although we are all different, we are all very similar. We all have gone through one of the most challenging things we will encounter in our lifetime, and we are still so strong. One of the biggest lessons I learned this year was to surround myself with people I love and that love. That is the best medicine.
Everyone has their battles, and what you see is not always what is true. I don’t like being vulnerable, and talking about my mental health is never something I volunteer to do; this piece is pointing out the most vulnerable thing about me and something that not only I struggle with, but that millions of people do too.