Inspired by the following works of Sigmund Freud:

Mourning and Melancholia, On Transience, and Thoughts for the Times on War and Death 

Adieu / The Final Goodbye Oil on Canvas – 72” x 96” Price:  $133,000   Cemeteries were forbidden within the overpopulated city limits of Paris in 1786, as burial grounds were seen to compromise public health, but a new demand for resting places accompanied the rising body count that resulted from the French Revolution. Under the orders of Napoleon the Père Lachaise Cemetery opened in 1804 under the name Cimetière de l’Est.   An empire divided like the chambers of the heart.  Adieu depicts the emotional aftermath of bereavement; the sour departure of a patriarchal order.  The sovereign head is split unevenly while sobbing children are left in disarray, questioning their place beneath the eyes of their benefactor.   Both the right and left panels of Adieu took over three days each for the artist to sketch. Creation based on a mathematical process, a compass and angle ruler were used to evaluate the precision of the measurements. When examined up close both fingers and hand prints are visible in the white “atmosphere” of the underlying background.  Produced in the artist’s signature “Skeletal System” the lines were groomed so meticulously that the bristles of the neglected brush were worn down to the wooden stick.   “My process requires me to think of the dead that are harnessed to the earth, looking out at all who pass above their graves without an ability to communicate.”                                                               –KEARIENE MUIZZ

Porte Au Paradis / The Door to Heaven Oil on Canvas – 11” x 14”   Price:  $7,500     Renamed the Père Lachaise Cemetery in honor of the original land owner, Jesuit priest Père François de La Chaise who was the confessor to Louis XIV.  Doors to this 109 acre necropolis opened in May 1804. Initially, the cemetery was created outside the confines of Paris. However, after being enlarged five times since opening, the city and cemetery eventually grew into one another.     This copper sculpture adorns the entry to a sepulcher. Porte Au Paradis represents the metaphorical entry into the afterlife.            “I translate the unspoken messages of the dead through the symbolism of the ornaments that have been selected to stand in their place.”                                                                                                      –KEARIENE MUIZZ

Bienvenue / Welcome Oil on Canvas – 15” x 45”   Price:  $18,499  During the battles of 1814 polytechnical students built walls around the cemetery to transform it into a fortress.  It was against one such wall that 147 revolutionaries were shot in the final days of the Paris Commune, a brief and controversial political party. Paris fell under the municipal rule for five years after the “Bloody Week,” where an estimated 20,000 were executed.   A confetti-like reception is punctuated by the eruption of colors as this two-headed sculpture adorns the entry of a sepulcher. Bienvenue is a visual rendering of the passage made as the soul migrates from the confines of life and enters the splendor of the spirit world.  A release that is no longer weighed down by flesh, the inner-self catapults through an unknown universe using a new variety of senses.    “My conversation with the poet took place in the summer before the war. A year later the war broke out and robbed the world of it's beauties. It destroyed not only the beauty of the countryside through which it passed and the works of art which it met on its path but it also shattered our pride in the achievements of our civilization, our admiration for many philosophers and artists, and our hopes of a final triumph over the differences between nations and races.  It tarnished the lofty impartiality of our science, it revealed our instincts in all their nakedness and let loose the evil spirits within us all which we thought had been tamed forever by centuries of continuous education by the noblest minds. It made our country small again and made the rest of the world far remote. It robbed us of very much we had loved, and showed us how ephemeral were many things that we had regarded as changeless.”   -SIGMUND FREUD, On Transience

Pétales D'Hier / Petals of Yesterday Oil on Canvas – 15” x 45   Price:           $36,000   Located in the 20th arrondissement the PèreLachaiseCemetery was established by Nicholas Frochet. Frochet successfully convinced the political forces of his time to permit the transfer of the legendary remains of French icons to the memorial park, establishing a trend that exists to this day.  The bodies of playwright Molière and poet La Fontaine were transported to the Père Lachaise Cemetery, accompanied by the notoriously persecuted lovers Abelard and Héloise –the historic couple who maintained a connection after enduring physical castration, the seizure of their illegitimate baby and years of estrangement.   In Pétales D'Hier a single “stone” rose is fixed in the gaze of a woman as symbolic petals surround her. Each deliberate stroke made by the palate knife represents an emblematic petal of frozen memories. The work of mourning involves a consuming evaluation and intrusive replay of lost moments and beliefs once held in the world. Those aggrieved often can not break away from the hypnotic lure of the past, departing from the once inviting world.   Anhedonia is the inability to derive joy and pleasure from events in life. This condition accompanied agoraphobic artist for several years as she recovered from the vast traumas that turned the once colorful world to parched shades of gray, ironically, this period also marks the artist’s search for something that represented her condition as she began to focus on gray statues, interpreting their “hidden” life, transforming them from the deathly semblance of gray to a vibrant existence; experiencing one out of four of Sigmund Freud’s noted vicissitudes or modes of defense, a subject the artist researched at the National Library of France months after identifying the body of her slain friend –the reversal of an instinct into its opposite.  The once vivid and rich inner-life of the artist switched to gray, which led to the compulsion to alter the lifeless gray stone flesh of statues.   “After my traumas I walked away believing I knew nothing of the outside world, my previous existence ceased. I retreated and took on the psychological task of nurturing, evaluating and rededicating my soul to feel safe with the life I was destined to acquire –a mental exertion that took Olympic proportions. The restoration of my soul was worth every tear. I own my life in a manner I never could have speculated before. I fought so hard for it to be so.”                                                                                                                                        –KEARIENE MUIZZ