Why start with a self-Portrait

Let’s face it. I am a white suburban soccer mom. Who am I to tell these stories? What is my intention? What is my motive? How does my my story and my trauma shape how I understand bullet related injuries? I needed to wrestle with these questions before I asked anyone else to share their story.

My Story

My dad taught me to draw portraits. My grandma and namesake, Lydia May Powers, was a portrait artist that died tragically when my dad was in his 20s. When I started to show interest, he pulled out his mom’s pastels from the 1940s, drew a line down a large sheet of pastel paper, and he drew on one side while I drew on the other. I took off. I would paint portraits of children I met on my travels, had several early commissions, and quickly focused on portraiture.

Ultimately, I chose to go pursue intercultural studies and nursing as opposed to fine art. Fast forward to 2017, I’ve been an ER nurse for 6 years recently transferred to St. Louis Children’s Hospital, one of the two Level 1 Pediatric Trauma centers in St. Louis City. I haven’t painted in years, I’m a mom of two little boys, working nights in a city that sees some of the highest rates of gun violence and penetrating injuries in children in the nation. I don’t fear bullets while walking my kids to school in the affluent bubble of my zipcode. I get home in the middle of the night and kiss my boys in their beds after I just cared for someone else’s child who is now in a body bag. I’m reeling and wrestling with how to make an impact. Amidst this, my dad takes his own life with a gun and I am just wrecked.

I inherit the same pastels, easels and drafting tables that he taught me on. I first picked up a brush just to grieve. Within, days of my dad’s funeral, I’m back at work and on my first shift back, I’m the nurse with the most experience putting a patient in a body bag….so that’s what I do. I get home at 2 am and paint night after night. There are parts of 2017 and 2018 I don’t even remember. I get a good trauma counselor and start looking for ways to use art both to heal, and have some impact on what comes through those trauma bay doors.

I start volunteering with Community Arts STL, an organization that uses art to creatively address trauma and violence in STL. I meet Darren Seals of Sankofa Unity Center at an event and start brain storming about how to use portraits to honor narratives of resilience and highlight the work going on in St. Louis. At a pediatric trauma conference at Cardinal Glennon Children’s Hospital around that same time, Dr. LJ Punch, then trauma surgeon at Barnes Jewish Hospital and now founder of The T and The BRIC, and Melik Coffey, then social worker with the Life Outside Violence at CGCH and now program director for LOV for the region. Melik and Dr. Punch spoke on the ripple effect of the trauma I saw nightly in the ED.

I applied to the Regional Arts Commission and won an artists support grant that I used to buy the supplies and equipment to start A Shot at Survival: Watercolor Portraits Illustrating What it takes to Survive Trauma In St. Louis. I’ve since painted portraits of Darren Seals and Dr. Punch among others. I am collaborating with Ben Scholle, a St. Louis Filmmaker whose work also explores the effects of bullet related violence in STL.

I had to step away from the ED for a time as painting trauma and working in trauma took its toll. I worked for two years as a nurse case manager with pediatric heart patients. I returned to working in trauma in a professional capacity in 2023 as the Trauma PI Coordinator at Cardinal Glennon Children’s Hospital.

I continue to paint and remain active in violence prevention in St. Louis.

I will continue to share these narratives and collaborate with the amazing organizations, artists, and advocates in St. Louis.

Please contact me at lydia@lydiawood.com to collaborate or to inquire about permission to use images of my paintings in the work you are doing on violence prevention or community advocacy.