I named it Amygdala. It’s actually a pretty bad painting, but it’s beautiful to me.
That first painting gave me back my joy. The joy I desperately wanted to find when I was forced to turn off mommy mode and go into warrior mode during twenty years in the Navy and three combat tours. The joy I searched so hard for when I was bedridden for two years after battling cancer. So much emotion and pain was poured onto that canvas. I didn’t expect anything from it, but it gave me so much back in return.
In my deepest darkest depression, my therapist wrote me a prescription to watch Bob Ross videos. I thought he was full of it. But when I do something, I go all in. It didn’t take long for those happy little trees to win me over, but there was just one problem.
It’s not that I didn’t have the skills — I got a scholarship to NYU for graphic design, used to do hand lettering, and even tagged a few walls in my graffiti days. I may have looked healthy, but I was sick. I still am.
I didn’t have the dexterity and motor skills to paint, and no amount of Bob Ross videos could change that. I couldn’t even shower without my husband’s help. After radiation treatment for my cancer, I felt completely incapable and useless in my own body. There was a constant burning sensation in my arms and hands, which would later be diagnosed as Fibromyalgia and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.
I kept watching those videos.
Finally I said, “what if I just tried?”
There had to be something I could do. I went on YouTube and saw people with no arms painting with their feet. If they could hold a paintbrush between their toes, I could find a way to paint too.
What did I have to lose? I already lost my joy. Life just meant pain. There was no cure for what I was suffering from. This was just how life was going to be.
I stumbled upon a method of painting that involved mixing paint with a medium in a cup, pouring it over a canvas, and just moving it around a little. This looked like something I could do. So my husband went to Michael’s and bought me all the supplies to do my first pour painting. He says it’s the best $200 he ever spent.
Continued at
https://www.nezlifestudios.com/
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In 2014, Hamilton Perkins founded Hamilton Perkins Collection, an independent brand, designing and producing unique and award winning bags and accessories from recycled materials.
Hamilton Perkins Collection exists to create timeless limited edition bags made from recycled plastic water bottles, pineapple leaf fiber, and billboard vinyl. The result is that no two bags are ever the same.
Our first design (pictured right), the Earth Bag Premium, was created so that our customers would not only carry a bag that was stylish but carry a bag they could be proud of. We surveyed more than 1,000 consumers to obtain their thoughts and feedback for each component of the Earth Bag Premium, which soon became one of our most popular designs.
Perkins was the winner of the Virginia Velocity Tour hosted by the Governor of Virginia, and the recipient of a HUD Community Development Block Grant. The non-profit B Lab honored Hamilton Perkins Collection as a "Best for the World Overall" B Corporation in 2017.
Hamilton Perkins Collection has been featured in Forbes, Fast Company, Money Magazine, and The Washington Post.
The brand is currently offered in nearly 100 leading department stores and specialty stores in the United States, Canada, and Europe.
