Stephanie Roberts
Let it fly
Words, for me, feel clumsy, bumbling, awkward…insufficient. Telling my stories through words is an anxiety-inducing task: a series of daunting, opaque, painful and limiting blockages. The flow eludes me. There is a deep well of emotion in the protective sanctuary of my innermost self yet inaccessible through words.
And so I make images.
Within the making of images, I have begun to hear my truest voice. It’s felt a little like rubbing sticks together to make fire: the passionate effort, then tiny sparks…then a delicate flame in the sparsest of kindling.
The solitude I craved showed up in the scenes I framed. The beauty I held holy blew her hot breath over nature’s every pixel. Light found my hurts and showed me how to diffuse her magic into the shadows. I lit the unseen corners. I softened the hard lines and balanced the darkness. I painted each square and rectangle with mood and longing and anger and love. I felt the luminous warmth of color and sunlight and shape and dimension penetrate the tight fist of my closed off heart…until
I could say with that true voice what I was meant to say.
Until I felt hope.
During this long and tenuous communion with hope, I have still carried the heavy burdens of self-doubt, anger, depression, anxiety, fear, and still too often, hopelessness. I have fought and screamed, kicked, cursed and burned blisters into my skin as I stood stubbornly in the fire of my own struggles.. But, image by image, I have come to understand what it is I wish to express, what I wish to feel and give. In this voiceless music, I have discovered a purpose, brilliantly illuminated with the radiant glow of hope.
It is this fiery and glittering torch of hope I wish to give to you, so that you might know the essence of your truest voice, so that you might feel the peace, solitude and beauty your soul craves, so that you might know and bring to light the color and shape, dimension, depth and passion of your most delicate and sacred dreams. So that your struggle may ease as mine has eased. So that you might find your gifts to share with the world.
Let it fly
Words, for me, feel clumsy, bumbling, awkward…insufficient. Telling my stories through words is an anxiety-inducing task: a series of daunting, opaque, painful and limiting blockages. The flow eludes me. There is a deep well of emotion in the protective sanctuary of my innermost self yet inaccessible through words.
And so I make images.
Within the making of images, I have begun to hear my truest voice. It’s felt a little like rubbing sticks together to make fire: the passionate effort, then tiny sparks…then a delicate flame in the sparsest of kindling.
The solitude I craved showed up in the scenes I framed. The beauty I held holy blew her hot breath over nature’s every pixel. Light found my hurts and showed me how to diffuse her magic into the shadows. I lit the unseen corners. I softened the hard lines and balanced the darkness. I painted each square and rectangle with mood and longing and anger and love. I felt the luminous warmth of color and sunlight and shape and dimension penetrate the tight fist of my closed off heart…until
I could say with that true voice what I was meant to say.
Until I felt hope.
During this long and tenuous communion with hope, I have still carried the heavy burdens of self-doubt, anger, depression, anxiety, fear, and still too often, hopelessness. I have fought and screamed, kicked, cursed and burned blisters into my skin as I stood stubbornly in the fire of my own struggles.. But, image by image, I have come to understand what it is I wish to express, what I wish to feel and give. In this voiceless music, I have discovered a purpose, brilliantly illuminated with the radiant glow of hope.
It is this fiery and glittering torch of hope I wish to give to you, so that you might know the essence of your truest voice, so that you might feel the peace, solitude and beauty your soul craves, so that you might know and bring to light the color and shape, dimension, depth and passion of your most delicate and sacred dreams. So that your struggle may ease as mine has eased. So that you might find your gifts to share with the world.