[<Overloaded>]

When you've got 30 litres of cola trapped in your body and you expell it all by creating an expressive art piece.

I feel quite vulnerable writing about this artwork.

I feel vulnerable because it brings back very specific emotions around feeling helpless, frustrated and dejected.
 
For those of you who’ve read my posts previously, you’ll know that I had a period of producing artwork that was centred around having Chronic Kidney Failure. This artwork and this specific period in my life are centred around a 2-month timeframe between mid-October and mid-December 2021. I submitted to the fact that I had CKD for the second time, as my first transplant had come to a natural end.
 
My frustration and need for expression were centred around deep feelings of helplessness due to my condition and not being assertive enough with my consultant. My consultant is a good guy, very experienced, very knowledgeable, very caring, in a direct way. I just didn’t make myself clear enough.

I went to see him in mid-October, I was struggling with anaemia and the iron injections weren’t making me feel better. I felt horrendous all of the time, bloated, tired… exhausted. I asked if I could get anything to make me feel better but they said they couldn’t do anything.

I went to a best friend’s wedding at the end of October, in hindsight, I should not have been there. I couldn’t hold down my food, my calves and feet had ballooned, red and swollen, and it was tiresome to walk and stand.

My swollen left foot.

Things started to slowly get worse and I couldn’t eat anything other than a small amount of biscuits per day, some days I couldn’t eat anything. I later discovered that the high urea levels in my blood affected my tastebuds, so most things tasted disgusting, especially meat. The hospital put me on high-calorie milkshake drinks, but they made me vomit, taking in no nutrition.

November was even worse, One night I got up at 2am, walked down the stairs from my bedroom in a dazed state, and tried to get out of the house. My wife rushed down to see what I was doing, I replied “I have to give my parents their shoes” I had a shopping bag in my hand ready to go and meet my parents in the early hours of the morning, My parents had passed away a few years earlier, so I was clearly having some kind of dream-like hallucination.

As I’d worked in care homes in the past, I thought it could have been a UTI. So I told my consultant the week after and he said I didn’t have a UTI. I left the clinic bewildered and wondering what happened that night. I told him I wanted to go on dialysis but he said I wasn’t unwell enough yet to receive the treatment. Hindsight strikes again, I wish I demanded treatment there and then. He even had the cheek to say I needed to lose weight, but in my world, I hadn’t eaten a full meal in about 6 weeks.

I could hardly get out of bed, just lying there waiting for this treatment to come around. As you can see, I struggled to walk or even leave the house in November 2021. We’re talking 300 metres a day on average. It was a lot less towards the end of the month.

I used the time to watch a lot of art documentaries, they were keeping me going, inspiring me to create art again when I got better. The most inspirational one was an outsider art documentary. I cried a lot while watching this.

December came around and I was no better, thankfully, not much worse. I saw my consultant, hoping to be signed off for dialysis treatment. I know he sees a lot of patients, but it was the way he said “I’m sorry to say that you’ll have to start dialysis” In my head I was saying “About fucking time! I’ve been waiting months”. As if he hadn’t been my doctor for the best part of 18 years.

Anyway, The date was set. 16th December. At last!

I talk about my first dialysis session in this post.

It wasn’t until about a month later, after a total of 50+ hours of treatment. I noticed that 30kg of fluid weight was removed from my body. When you have a dialysis session, you have a dry weight, where you have no excess fluid. During the gap between sessions, you are usually holding onto any fluids you have consumed. You’re limited to around 0.8 litres per day but sometimes you might go over, and this excess fluid is drained again during the next session.

Because I’d be overloaded for so long, I collected 30kg, YES, 30kg, of excess fluid inside of my body. My legs and ankles were swollen, my face was bloated, my right arm and hand puffed up and I had a little bit of fluid in my lungs.

The great news was that after this behemoth of excess water was drained from inside of me, I started feeling so much better. I could walk a little more and I had the energy to go down to my art studio and paint again.

This was where this piece was born.
 
This art piece is emotional for me, as I didn’t really see how unwell I looked at the time. Looking back in hindsight, I was a very sick man. Here’s the reference photo I used for this artwork:

OVERLOADED (2022) – 60 cm x 60 cm – Acrylic painting on canvas

Artwork short description: Although I didn’t know it then, I had 30 litres of excess fluid in my body as my kidneys weren’t working as they should, they weren’t processing the urine needed to expel it.

I had fluid in my lungs, fluid in my feet and ankles, fluid in my legs, fluid in my abdomen, fluid in my right hand and arm, and fluid in my face. Overloaded with fluid, my blood pressure was through the roof.

The excess fluid was the equivalent of 15 x 2-litre cola bottles in my body.

OVERLOADED (2022) – 60 cm x 60 cm – Acrylic painting on canvas, with Artist, SLART.

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Overloaded (2022) at my solo Exhibition, FISTULA, 21st May 2022

Overloaded (2022) at my solo Exhibition at The Holy Art, London, 26-28th August 2022

As you can see above, I installed an addition to the piece, this consisted of 15 x 2-litre cola bottles with a custom label I designed. I branded them ‘OVERLOADED COLA’. I thought it was quite a clever idea, but it was either underappreciated or misunderstood 😃 (or both).

If you’d like to buy a print of Overloaded, you’re most welcome to, please visit my online shop.

Thank you for taking the time to read this post.

Best wishes,

SLART

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