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I did a radio interview last week on WIMG 1300AM on the show Trenton Talks. I was interviewed by the host, Benny Macklin. During the show he found it very brave of me to share a very personal detail about myself; that is that I have an illness called Bipolar illness (also called manic depressive illness). Bipolar is a mood disorder that causes the affected to have extreme mood swings from very high- manic to very low- depression. Although, it manifested itself in my mid-teens it wasn’t discovered until 2004 when I had a very bad episode- very unpleasant. At the time, I was in my original studio and one day when I was doing really badly, my father came to check on me. I was painting Trenti-Lift Shoes then. This visit was so special to me because I remember looking at my painting, which had a big smile, and I told my father that I just wanted to feel like the people in my paintings. My father hugged me so tight, I felt like a little boy again.

Concurrent to this, I was working on a commission. I was supposed to be painting a large painting of windsurfers on the water with the sun in the sky in the background. Well, the resulting painting really represented what was going on at the time in my head, because when I got to the sun in the sky I went wild.

I was having trouble making the sky bright. I painted blue but it wasn’t quite right so I painted yellow over it. Elementary color theory- blue and yellow make green. This was not what I wanted; no green sky. Something clicked. A bell or something must've gone off and I thought, “Why don’t I try this, then this, then this..?” I ended up painting swirls and lines and 3-dimensional gems; almost what I'd call Aztec-looking patterns in the sun and I thought it was just the greatest thing. (That's what happens when you’re manic – you think your ideas are the best thing in the world).

I completed it and my clients came to get it to take home. I don’t remember their original reaction but they took it anyway. It wasn’t what they wanted. After a while they brought it back and said it was just “too much”. All they wanted was a blue sky with a sun in it. What they got was a wild and crazy sky. What it was was a manifestation of what was going on inside of me, inside my head.  Now, this was before we knew what was wrong with me. Soon after I went into the hospital.

Although, as with any art, some people like the resulting painting (named The Windsurfers) and some people don’t, this painting is probably the one in which I inadvertently revealed that part of me that I don’t like to show; the darker side of bipolar.

This history of the painting is why the client to whom this painting belongs purchased the painting, as it corresponded to the illness touching their life in some way. I was happy that the painting will now have meaning to someone else.

I take medication for my illness and it has worked out very well for me. I don’t think all my ideas are the greatest in the world anymore and as you might hear, the meds do take away the flurry of ideas one gets, but they are worth taking every one.

Although, I didn't go into detail like this on the radio show, the host thanked me for revealing this personal part of my story. Now you know it too. If bipolar has affected you in some way, just know it can be treated and your life can get back to normalcy (whatever can be called normal in the crazy life of an artist).