Scars

Lakewood Ranch artist Brenda K. Robinson and Sarasota poet Mary Katherine Wainwright, who has since moved to Mexico, met at a Halo Arts Project opening in 2020 and became fast friends. The strong connection between painting and poem is a tribute to the strength of their friendship. 

Brenda’s statement: This painting connects the scars, the scars of memory. The simple meaning in this painting is that you were stronger than whatever tried to hurt you and every scar has a story and a song to tell. The scars are there, seen or unseen. Singing in the skin I am in, colorful scars that reflect the light, a beauty that is impermanent, and incomplete. Her scars are filled with colors, and marks of grief and time sparkling and shining, in a celebration of the human condition. 

Mary Katherine’s statement: Scars make us who we are.  Sometimes they’re physical.  I still carry the scars from the hot iron when I was a young bride trying to be domestic.  But others, maybe more meaningful, are the scars that we don’t dare reveal to others—the scars that are hidden, that only we know.  Yet it is these scars that provide the rich texture of our lives.  I like to envision them singing.