Art: Whirly Swirly Dizzy Spells

I painted this piece several weeks ago, but for many reasons, am just getting around to writing about it now. It’s rather apt timing as this week I’ve been plagued by quite a lot of what this painting represents.

Whirly Swirly Dizzy Spells (Bright pink swirl with messy yellow swirl inside, blue dots inside of that, random green swirls, and orange triangles, white lines around. Black background)

Any guesses?

If you guessed that it represented dizziness or vertigo, then you win a prize!

What prize… I’m not sure. But a prize for sure (Ok… the title probably gave it away!).

For various reasons, migraines, malnutrition, and other unknown reasons, I have had dizziness and vertigo issues for the last few years.

I decided to go back into acrylics for this one, so that I could get a more swirly, flat look. I didn’t want to have the same texture and layers that oil paint gives me, but rather a more messy, 80’s look with bright colours contrasted against a black background.

The big pink and yellow swirls, with the blue dots, represent the feeling of the world shifting and moving around. The random green swirls also show off how, when a dizzy spell hits, it feels like you are spinning, and the earth is turning.

The orange triangles and white lines are there because when I get a bad bout of vertigo, it can feel like there are explosions going on when I close my eyes. They represent the random sparks, swirls, and whirls that happen during an attack.

I liked the idea of having the colours be bright and pop against the black background to show how when a dizzy spell hits, sometimes the world feels like it’s going dark, and nothing else pops except for the vertigo.

Additionally, I left the painting messy because I feel like dizziness is messy. It’s not clean, or neat. It’s fuzzy, and leaves you confused. It’s not nice.

So, that’s my latest painting, and how I’ve how I’ve chosen to try and represent my dizzy spells.