Nola Parker

I conceived of these paintings as I set out, a few years ago, on a journey to heal from complex trauma.

I found myself annoyed and frustrated to learn that, in order to feel better, I somehow had to feel worse first. Especially when it comes to long-buried, foundational hurts, the hurt must be felt before it can be moved through. This applies for both personal and systemic traumas; healing cannot come before feeling the pain of the experience, shedding the protection of numbness. The River Lethe came to mind, a mythical river that, according to the ancient Greeks, was part of the Underworld or Hades. When a person drank from the River Lethe, they would forget all about their former life. At the time I was confronting and grieving my own lost memories, feeling that at some point, I must have drank from this river myself.

I am a firm believer in the power of myth and folklore as tools to better understand the world and each other. This work is a piece of personal myth-making, imagining the healing path as a journey into some kind of inner underworld, one influenced by the various confluences of these hellish Greek waterways, but shaped by my earthly surroundings. Each of the primary rivers of the underworld are depicted in these paintings. The River Lethe of course, as well as the Acheron, Phlegethon, Cocytus, Styx, and a personal favorite, the Mnemosyne. The Mnemosyne is not often included in depictions of Hades, but it is the river parallel to the Lethe. To drink from its waters is to remember, to welcome back into oneself all of what was — to become whole again.