Cynthia Brideson

Artist Statement

I used to be many things. Author, eccentric Californian, identical twin. With my twin, Sara, I wrote for an academic press from 2013-2020. But, after a decade of living with an eating disorder and losing Sara to suicide in 2017, I ceased writing. I spent many a birthday as an inpatient, juggling my assorted mental and physical illnesses. And then…while bitterly slouching over a sketch in art therapy during my last stay in a psych ward, a nurse told me, “you’re an artist. That’s what you gotta do.” I currently devote myself to art and am content to lose countless hours in my home studio. Aside from an artist, I describe myself as an idealistic cynic, cat devotee, and anachronism.
My art tends to mostly deal with the themes of mental illness and eating disorders. These are what I know best and what I am curious to explore and recognize in myself and others. I spent too many years early in my illnesses pretending that they didn’t exist; recognition is often the first step to healing. My own experience of mental illness and eating disorders began the same way it does for many: perfectionism and the impossible standards that come with it. As a child and as an adult, women of the silver screen held me under a spell. I wanted their beauty, mystery, and sophistication. Sara and I obsessively tried to imitate our favorite stars. Our quest for beauty and acceptance was a futile one; there was always something not good enough. We found that it wasn’t so different with the stars we idolized. Behind the scenes, they suffered with addictions, suicide attempts, and eating disorders—problems that mirrored our own. I wondered if anyone would remember these women if they had not been beautiful and perfect in the eyes of the world. In her novel, Blonde, Joyce Carol Oates observed that, “there is something female about being dead.” After Sara’s death, Oates’s words and the senseless deaths of so many of the women who Sara and I had idolized gripped my mind. As an artist, I want to take stark yet compassionate views of the despair that too often passes as glamour in our world. I want to turn tragedy into illumination. My art is for Sara and all the Saras who can still find a way out.