“Just Let me Lay Here” by Hallie Davis

24X20 inches

2022

Mixed Media, Acrylic on Canvas

This piece took me 2 years to finish. During those 2 years I underwent drastic changes that led me to reflect on my life. The things that happened to me as a child and the things I chose as a young adult. To really understand and heal from those events. This piece signifies me coming back to my art. Letting whatever thought popped into my mind out onto the canvas. Leading up to the making of “Just Let me Lay Here” I was teaching English in Beijing, China. I had about 6 weeks left of my yearlong contract when COVID-19 came about. I did not get the chance to say goodbye in person to any of my students or my friends. I came back to my small town in Ohio, USA and didn’t leave my house for weeks due to racist remarks about where I had just come from. I went from living this exciting life abroad to living with my then fiancé at the time in an apartment above the garage at his grandparents’ house. I struggled getting out of bed. This life that I had come back to was no longer mine. This was no longer my home, and neither was he. I broke off the engagement and moved into my own apartment, living alone, for the very first time. “Just Let me Lay Here” represents my healing journey that would take place over the next 2 years. Finding out who I truly was and wanted to be without the pressure from parents, roommates, or significant others. What I found is that life is slippery, it can be as simple as riding a bike, the lure of both the country and the city life calls to me. The inside jokes that only you two will ever get. How everything can feel so serious and then as if nothing is real. So I take a moment…and I lay down. Listening to my own breath and watching the clouds roll on by.