Taking eleven oral medications / vitamin supplements a day, some to combat the effects of others, requires discipline. Not just remembering to take them all, at the right times, under the optimal conditions, but also the mental energy of dependence. When I hear someone say they don’t want to take their pills anymore, I get it. It’s beyond tiresome. It’s a necessary nuance. Freedom is not possible.

I started exploring this theme by laying out and photographing my pills, not ever having a full 30 day supply on hand, due to the prescription refill dates staggering throughout the month. Organized rows turned into round piles, then the pills made it into my hand. At first, all 11 were clustered in a single shot, then I started photographing the pills I took grouped by time of day. This realistically portrays the annoyance of the repetitive action of self-medicating three times a day.

Compositionally, my work started literally, using honest skin tones with some Photoshop effects. The initial goal was to organize 30 hands with the pills, to show a month’s supply. At 96 inches long, the hands would overlap and only stand roughly 10 inches high. I also worked with compositions that eliminated the hands completely and see possibilities in the grid like, highly contrasted organization.

Within my research, I read quite a bit about the prescription drug industry in the USA and in other countries. After studying how the prescription drug market and the FDA work, I hope this piece also asks people to consider two issues: One, why is there no permanent cure for diseases or afflictions that have been around for decades, such as hypothyroidism? I must take a tiny pink pill at precisely the same time each morning an hour before injecting food or coffee for basically my whole life; and Two, people without insurance (or with insufficient insurance) may have to pay full price or be on medication that costs over $100 a pill. I read horror stories about people sacrificing their jewelry collections just to be able to afford one month’s of medications. In the world’s richest country, we should not have to sell off our prized possessions, possibly passed down several generations, just to be able to afford medicines that may or may not even help us, while millionaires and billionaires can now pass their wealth onto future generations without so much of paying a penny in tax to do so.

Those stories won’t be evident in the visual representation of my work, but the understanding and possible empathy should be. The length of the work, the repetition of the hands, the range of emotions, the never ending cycle...that is what i hope people see when they view the work.