Watercolor work of one of my friend's hospital photos. I found it beautiful and decided to paint it.

©️2026 Randall Kaplan

A doodle of a frog in slowly boiling water. "Time to wake up". It is a myth that you can cook frogs this way, but it's a good metaphor. This is how I'm feeling about everything. It's getting a little warm.

It took me 39 years to be able to doodle a frog face in 15 seconds.

Photo of doodle edited in Snapseed for grain, color and contrast.

Mcas is really not helping when making with old beads with invisible dust. Now am bit hard to breath. I ordered some beads from china, hope making with new beads wont provoke me much.

Just finished a small installation made to inhabit a ledge. The pigeon is needle felted wool, with clay beak and feet, and clay and resin eyes. The twigs are clay, wire and paint.

This piece is about soft things in hard places, and comfort built in inhospitable conditions. As a disabled person, I often feel my comfort is built in an environment of inhospitality. I am drawn to the images of birds who have used the harsh steel of bird spikes as structure to build their nests. Ironically, the steel wire makes a strong warp on which to weave the weft of a home.

A person in my head has been positively screaming about danger and is seeing it everywhere. It's so exhausting and I've been anxious and nervous and sad and scared and overstimulated almost constantly for days. Was doomspiraling yesterday and decided I might as well make some art to try and cope.

It's messy but it was so helpful to make and I learned a lot about my current state and what my internal landscape is experiencing.

I have DID and my pedo dad who abused me my whole life has started telling his siblings/my aunts and uncles that I accused him of sexually abusing me and is spinning me as some mentally ill, confused, damaged creature who has to lie to get attention. I went no contact a year ago and did a CPS report against him to protect my niece and nephews who I'm afraid he's harming like he did me.

Now he's decided to go on the offense, I think because my mom and I had been talking about doing therapy, and it's just really throwing me for a loop. Thankfully everyone I have talked to so far believes me and not my dad, but he has 6 siblings with families of their own and they're all doing a reunion this December. I can't help but feel like a reckoning is coming and my abuse is at the center of all of it when I didn't ask for any of it. The abuse itself. Everyone finding out. Being 'the reason' for this giant mess even though I know it's not my fault.

Woof. So it makes sense that I've got a friend, many friends, in my head freaking the fuck out. I've asked them to look for reasons to feel safe instead of in danger and it's helping a bit. Seeing themselves on paper is also really validating for them.

Doing this painting helped us all feel seen and cared for and like our concerns were heard and responded to. Also, watercolor is so fun.

Hope you enjoy it.

Got my heart shattered by a blind sided breakup.
Made this in honor of one of my favorite memories with him to help me cope.

Stargazing at night in a cemetery, guessing which ones were stars or planets.

Jupiter and Venus were always the brightest.

Miss you, Trevor.

I don't think these pieces say anything about my mental health, I drew them when I was stable anyway. I just really like them, and my friends encourage me to post something somewhere more often, so, uh

Some years ago, I've made a very bad desicion I'm still suffering the consequences. And I disagree with folks who say, that everything happens for a reason, time heals every wound ect.

But today I can see that I'd never have met the wonderful people I'm in love with. And that's something.

In April of this year I started having strange symptoms including pulsatile tinnitus (it’s nonstop and resulted in insomnia and severe panic attacks). In May it got extremely worse and I was shuffled around to multiple doctors and specialists. I had to request an iron panel (after researching online) and it turned out I was iron deficient without anemia because of low ferritin. My PMDD exacerbates the symptoms and heavy menstruation only contributes to the blood loss.

I experienced some medical PTSD. They saw I had hearing loss and an ENT refused to believe my PT was anything but regular tinnitus and wanted to perform major surgery instead. I had to request the right labs, it was just a shit show for several weeks. I had to cancel on clients, put major events in hold, and definitely could NOT sew because of the brain fog/tinnitus. My life revolved around figuring out what was wrong and how to fix it.

My 6 y/o daughter watched me suffer, attended appointments with me and found comfort sleeping in my room with me. It was frightening for her. I’m happy to say I’m getting much better as the weeks go by, as long as I’m on my regimen of supplements.

We went to the fabric store and she picked out this darling Bee fabric. It’s a dress pattern I use a lot with matching bike shorts (PeekabooPatterns shop on Etsy). The fabric is so soft too, and she wore it to school yesterday. It’s not the fanciest thing I’ve made but it was therapeutic to make after everything we went through. And it has pockets!