In January 2019, I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and began keeping a mood diary in a Google sheet. Every day since, I’ve tracked elevated mood, depression, irritability, anxiety, hours of sleep, and medication. As I scroll down the spreadsheet, episodes appear as rosy waves of conditional formatting. A bad day stands out as a red blotch. The blue medication columns deepen as dosages increase.

Since my teen years, during difficult periods of transition I’ve found comfort in daily routines. After one of my first breakups, I drew a self portrait a day. The early faces were full of pain and suffering, but by the end of the month I was smiling again, youthfully rebounded. Steeling myself to leave college, I wrote one short song a day, transcribing my anxieties into lyrics. I recorded acoustic bass in the bathtub while my roommates vacationed with their families.

This 2023 series of daily self portraits during a hypomanic episode followed the anticlimactic breakup of my longest relationship, and began the re-ignition of my years-dormant creative practice.

Each painting is acrylic on 6”x6” canvas.