#sue klebold
“Mother is the name for God on the lips and hearts of all children”
-Eric Draven (The Crow)
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I am not a mother myself and I don’t wish to become one, but I am a daughter and a sister, a child of a broken home, as many others, I’m someone who witnessed and endured several common mistakes our parents made with my younger sister and I, but also, someone who knows with complete certainty those mistakes weren’t conscious.
So, once again I’m trying to convey what I’ve learned through what this brave woman shared with the world, with the main goal to help others and prevent them from going through what she and some other mothers, fathers, siblings and families have suffered unnecessarily.
I firmly believe Sue isn’t guilty or responsible for the crime her younger son perpetrated 20 years ago, tho, I know she committed some serious mistakes, out of ignorance, about the struggles that young man was enduring right before his suicide.
That’s why I pictured here what she tried to be for him as for his older brother: just the best mom she could, maybe not a perfect one and not even the one her son needed at that time, but the absolute best she could and that’s something no one, not even him and what he did, can take away from her.
Susan Frances Klebold
This lady inspires me to no end, having found her and her message, help me to finally give closure to maybe one of the biggest issues of my parents divorce, that I carried with me since 20 years ago.
Tho, I know I was able to heal principally because I had the will and the wish to do so, it was her words and experience, tho, completely unrelated to mine, which finally give me the tools to put everything in perspective and gave me the final push to be able to move on, that’s one of the reasons I hugely admire her and feel a great gratitude for going out there and share her experiences and will to help others who might be struggling.
I do not believe she’s responsible for what her son did, but I do know she made a lot of mistakes that made the situation possible, however, I believe her fiercely when she says, if she’d had known, she’d tried her best to prevent it from happening.
I don’t believe there’s someone who would not try to help it’s child if they knew they are suffering in any way.
So, because I’m glad she decided to step forward and try to help in her way and with her best will…I made these studies of her…just because to me, she’s awesome!!
These couples of drawings have a difference of 8 years between each other.
I just made this comparison because I don’t believe being able to develop any skill is about talent or just “having a gift”, it’s about perseverance and the wish to overcome your own limitations and get the goals you set for yourself, “making art” is not different, as anything else in life, you must fail until you start to get progress little by little, but I believe you never stop learning and evolving.
You have to be willing to make it “wrong” more times that it will turn out “right”, there’s nothing magical or exceptional about drawing, at least if you’re some Picasso or Caravaggio.
It’s true we all have different capabilities and our brains have different “kinds of intelligence”, but if you really want to get an hability like drawing, you just have to be passionate and stubborn, but also humble and open to constructive criticism.
But hey! This is just my opinion
I’m a person who believes there should always be the right to have freedom of expression, even if sometimes is not comfortable to others, because the fact it’s not nice, doesn’t mean, that expression is looking to offend those who don’t like it. It’s only the venting of an idea or the wish to share something with others.
Since last year, after I fortuitously got to know about Susan Klebold and her journey after the crime her younger son perpetrated and his subsequent suicide. I not only developed an interest in her and what she has to say about such crime, her son and her fight to create consciousness around mental health issues, but I also felt able to look at this person in a new light, i started to see him as a human being, which took me to want to reproduce some of the photos Susan has shared of him through the years, because I wanted to represent that human, that child she raised.
However, for the first time in 20 years of having been learning to draw and have become an arts mayor, I’ve found a huge percentage of rejection and hostility towards this reproductions, people rush to conclude that my only interest is to glorify and enhance him, giving him attributes he didn’t had, pretending he didn’t do anything wrong or even believing I support or condone such atrocities.
By no means and in no moment, I’m pretending to promote these kind of ideas, but I think is sad and frustrating that those who only wish to make images or illustrations about these topics or any other that turns out to be polemic, whether is for a certain interest or just for the exercise of making any artwork, don’t have the right to share those without being attacked and referred to as deranged and sick persons who only wish to promote the actions of these persons or who only want to disrespect or disregard it’s victims and pretend they were right for acting as they did or deserve more attention than those who lost their life at their hands.
Art is a mean of expression, a way to share what we feel, what we live, what we think, what we fear, about things that makes us hurt, things we want, things we enjoy and, tho, sometimes those messages can be uncomfortable or hurtful, it’s also a right and a necessity for it to exist and generate such disconfort, this, with the objective of create a debate, generate consciousness and analysis, promote the search for learning and a better understanding of the topic it represents or sometimes just share a visual composition.
In my case, I’m not trying to take away the responsibility and concecuences of the actions this young man perpetrated, nor I pretend to force others to see him differently as what they perceive of him, I just wish I didn’t feel like I have to hide what I’ve been drawing, I wish people could see that I’m only making visual pieces about a topic that got me thinking and has helped me widen my views about some of the biggest issues of our time which is our mental health.
My personal belief is that demonizing this people is as harmful as glorifying them, I feel we should try to see them as humans, even and specially, if it is inconvenient and uncomfortable, because anyone of us could be them, anyone of us could reach their point, if we, as them, don’t get the chance to be helped, anyone of us could be as hateful and ruthless, anyone of us could get as lost as they got and pretending they were plain evil, it’s not only naive, but potentially dangerous, the last 20 years and the continuous occurrence of these kind of tragedies is sadly, the best proof we haven’t learned enough of it, we haven’t payed enough attention.
“The truth was that I loved my son, I hated what he had done, but I still love my son”
“Dylan had attended prom the weekend before with a big group of his friends, and I returned to my memories of that night and the next day. I’d gotten up from bed to check in with him when he got home early the morning after prom. he’d had a great night, and thanked me for buying his ticket.” - Sue Klebold, A Mother’s Reckoning
[“I’d done a good job with this kid, I’d thought to myself as I returned to my room that night….”]
