Monday, December 9, 10:00am – 1:30pm, Owen Hall 203 and via Zoom
Olive Spence
Dr. Suzanne Dittenber, Dr. Brent Skidmore, Dr. Jackson Martin, Dr. Eric Tomberlin, Dr. Louise Deroualle, Dr. Megan Wolfe, Dr. Carrie Tomberlin
In the past 200 years, an aversion to rest and sleep has been on the rise, slowly growing, being fed discreetly by capitalism, remaining under the surface and malignant. This distaste towards inactivity grew and now sprawls unrestrained through current culture, demonizing rest and downtime for rejuvenation. Every human being and animal must rest and sleep. Both are requirements of sustaining life on earth. While both are crucial to survival, the practice of sleeping and resting are different. One is an altered state of consciousness, the other is an altered state of being—one still awake and aware, engaged. The two are related to one another in that they are respite from 21st century’s requirements…sleep is essential for the body, rest is essential for the mind. The concept of rest and how it is separate from sleep is investigated and explained through research and writing. The research involved using medical journals, news and magazine articles, as well as comparing and contrasting historical paintings of rest and sleep. These ideas are then translated through oil portraiture, depicting different kinds of rest and various figures engaging in rest without guilt or shame, in their safe restful environments, despite the loaded past that rest carries with it. On canvas, figures are painted sleeping, laying down, cuddling, and playing video games, all answering the body’s call for respite from movement. By painting those at rest and sleeping, thus celebrating and recontextualizing the act, the work redefines the rhetoric around taking time for oneself from negative to positive, to sacred.