Eating Paint: An Expressive Life

By Candi S. Cross and Halena Cline

"Even though there is no one definition of what constitutes art, through Halena's victorious story, we can feel the power of art to express, heal, make sense of our experiences, resolve conflict, and give us alternative ways to grow, reinvent and feel joy." 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Paragon Studio
• Release date: May 22, 2023
• ISBN: 9798988242826

Candi S. Cross

Candi S. Cross is a WSJ and USA Today bestselling ghostwriter and the founder of You Talk I Write, a modern storytelling agency. Shehas co-developed more than 180 books with authors worldwide. Candi is committed to helping diverse individuals with contemporarystories that make a difference. She lives in New York City with her wife and 24/7 muse, Liza. Visit www.youtalkiwrite.com.

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Title

Copyright © 2023 by Candi S. Cross

Published by Paragon Studio

Book Design and Interior by Damonza

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Printed in the United States of America

First Printing, 2023

ISBN 979-8-9882428-1-9 (paperback)

ISBN 979-8-9882428-0-2 (hardcover)

eBook ISBN 979-8-9882428-2-6

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Coloring in the Pain

Chapter 1: Images of Driving the Dead

Chapter 2: Violent Textures

Chapter 3: Carry No Possessions

Chapter 4: Love and Realism

Chapter 5: Saved from the Edge

Chapter 6: Healing Requires High Gloss

Chapter 7: Night at the Museums

Chapter 8: Daring Debut

Chapter 9: Public Apology for Not Producing a Son

Chapter 10: Blunt Instruments of Expression

Chapter 11: Advanced Lessons in Articulating Grief

Chapter 12: Art Will Stop the Apocalypse

Beautiful Madness Selected Works

Chapter 13: Muses of Mexico City

Chapter 14: Thief of Innocence

Chapter 15: Lovely Little Legacies

Chapter 16: Eating Paint

Chapter 17: Teaching an Expressive Life

Chapter 18: Yellow Wallpaper

Chapter 19: Triggered (and Trained) by Hadestown

About the Authors

Acknowledgments

I’m thrilled to have my life story recorded. In a person’s life there are those who can nudge you in positive directions. In my case, I was lucky to have the teachers who recognized my abilities and helped to prompt me in the direction of art. Teachers can be and are heroes.

I thank David, my loving husband for all his courage and dedication.

And I acknowledge my two daughters, Deborah and Jessica, who both in their own way, changed my life for the better.

Dr. Steven Katkin, who has guided me to a balanced and happy life.

My studio assistant, Bailey Allen, whose graphic design and computer skills I couldn’t be without.

Collaborative writer, Candi S. Cross especially, who remained enthusiastic and encouraged me throughout the book. I loved my inspiring visits to New York City. We laughed (a lot) and we cried! What a gratifying process together.

And thank you to my beautiful grandchildren, who bring me such joy.

— Halena Cline

Introduction

Coloring in the Pain

Art can never exist without naked beauty displayed.

—William Blake

Does art throw you over the edge or prevent you from walking over it? If you express all your pain, can you empty out until you have nothing left to feel but stillness, renewal…maybe even bliss?

These are the questions that Halena’s art provokes. On a summer night carrying a lot of inquiry, I met her at Veronika, a decadent restaurant in the elevated photography museum in New York City that is Fotografiska. This place was simply adding more layers to the visual cake that had become our collaboration over the past few months. We were on a mission to write her life story. Her complex art mixed with so many different features "you have to live with it for a month or two to know it" hinted at the themes of all that Halena Faye Vincent Cline had experienced over the course of seventy-four years. I became her diary to supplement what 4,000+ creations could not convey.

When Halena found me through connecting on LinkedIn, she didn’t realize that our lives had intersected decades ago, attending the same college and frequenting the same haunts in Cincinnati, Ohio, my hometown. On numerous occasions, I hopped floor to floor of Pendleton Arts Center, where her studio is located. This eight-story building houses approximately 200 artists at any given time inside of 150,000 square feet of original art, previously including an ex’s photography den. Most importantly, it was the same address of the local rag that bought my first article, a piece on College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning’s iconic DAAP Fashion Show. A significant milestone in my life that opened all the doors to becoming a fulltime writer. I do recall taking notice of Halena’s art each time I passed, but we didn’t meet. That would come through a sheer act of urgency.

Halena had just spent five days at the Lindner Center of HOPE bravely facing her demons popping up like a video game every time she thought she had won. This wasn’t a game though. Longtime clinical depression, addiction, the screaming inner child begging for closure or reconciliation.

Our inner knowing stirs in discomfort then finally, angst, until there’s no way around but in. Deeply in. She tried to paint her desired ending before checking into the Lindner Center: Escort to the Underworld, 37 x 34, which is both symbolic of her trappings and nightmares as a child in a dark Catholic orphanage and visions of being carried out of this life in a peaceful manner. She also wrote the following poem:

I’m in a shell of non-living,

my spirit for life is smashed to hell.

I can’t proceed because I see nothing on the horizon.

I’m broken; life is cruel and meaningless.

There is no reward, it’s delusional. Curses to the ones at the end.

There’s no peace ever,

except death, which may be pleasant.

When Halena read the poem to her therapist, Dr. Katkin, he asked, Don’t you think that’s the little girl in you? Yes. She couldn’t be in denial any longer. But this answer meant that her usual binge of drinking and painting for the next twenty-four hours would not do. She could not color in the pain. Hours later, her husband drove her to the Lindner Center.

When Halena contacted me to help her write her life story, she was completely transparent about all she had endured in the past weeks in the quest of stability. Her heart remained with her husband, daughters, grandchildren, and all things artistic that filled her hours with joy and purpose. Reasons to live. But her head was still in that orphanage, foster homes, and other extremes no children should have to wrestle with. That struggle is real for so many of us. Nietzsche said, Thoughts are the shadows of our feelings—always darker, emptier and simpler.

I admired her courage and resilience, which planted the seed for the freedom I sensed she would have through this reckoning of her experiences—and be an inspiration to others. You don’t have to create art to realize that life is art and art is life!

Back to our first meeting; she’s guiding me through a magical art journal. Two of the wait staff hover over our corner table to hear what she has to say about this huge leather-bound spectacle. It looks like it was pulled from the universe of Harry Potter.

I only start with this figure, and I glue it down, she said in a certain, sing-songy way. And then I look around and think about it and start adding pieces, moon, and stars. We develop a conversation—me and the art. It’s the same as looking at a photograph. If you look at it long enough, you can understand that it’s trying to communicate. With modern art, participants get in their own way. They won’t let it command attention. They want it to be something they understand immediately. They may think something is awful at first sight, but a conversation can ensue and change their mind. Like the process she undertook to untangle her life and interpret it all as something worthwhile and profound.

Chapter 1

Images of Driving the Dead

A happy childhood is the worst possible preparation for life.

—Kinky Friedman

Unyielding passion drew Halena’s parents, Howell and Easter, together even though they were already spoken for. Easter had sold a house to Howell and his wife, Opal. Easter locked eyes with him and they were both spellbound. Easter was pregnant with Elizabeth Sue, the daughter from her marriage to Charles MacCrander and named after Easter’s mother, who had died from the Spanish flu when Easter was just two years old. Easter’s father, a farmer straight out of the Grapes of Wrath and simply known as Pa Baker, married a woman who was cruel to Easter, going so far as burning her legs with a hot iron and making her eat food with chicken dung in it. It came to a point that Pa Baker and this woman decided to put Easter in a Christian home. It worked in her favor because she would run away and flirt with boys and eventually meet her first husband, Charles, who she had two children with before marrying Howell Vincent and bearing Charles’s third child, along with five more of Howell’s children—all daughters.

At the age of four, Halena fixed her eyes on her mother’s lips and loved the glossy, bright color of them when painted. Lipstick created magic. Therefore, she used it on mirrors for the creations in her head whenever she could sneak a tube to a private space. It was the gateway tool before creating her own paper dolls and their outfits at the age of eleven. She had the artist’s eye for visual storytelling. Later, Halena would say that being self-taught in this manner opened the door to solving problems in creative ways—especially in the orphanage. After all, if you could conjure up a story out of a problem, you might find a solution from the sheer necessity to create an ending.

Nearby, Easter and Howell were engrossed in the activity of the hour, sitting at a large table in the parlor cutting out articles from the newspaper featuring him