Painted by Harper Leich and based on reference photos taken by Leich, the story of this painting was told by Kitty Love.

Kitty writes: 

I left Baltimore in 1995, to escape the ravages of Papaver Somnferum, in the form of heroin. I was tired of falling in love with the doomed. I suppose it must be my karma, but some of the first people I met in Asheville were also junkies. Opiates have a purpose, to ease pain. If they are ingested to excess, when one is not in physical pain, one soon enters a state in which it is painful not to always have the substance in one’s system.

My life long trade of tattooing attracts a variety of odd sorts of people. Many of them are drug users. When I opened my first tattoo studio in Asheville, I painted the inside of the lobby with poppies. Despite my desire to flee the damage I saw done to folks by this flower, I have always been drawn by its charisma. I’ve never done dope myself, but I feel like I have been close enough to understand its power in some measure. 

I’ve often heard it said by people in recovery circles that some of the most amazing people are struggling with addiction, and I have also found this to be true. I feel that the culture in which we live, with its mad obsession with money and power, does not contain a reasonable value system against which to judge the actions of the people within it. When so much importance placed on wealth, and creativity is undervalued, the creative are put in a confusing position regarding what they have to offer us. It’s interesting to me how many intelligent and creative people have found the joy eaten out of the middle of their lives by a self-perpetuating cycle of addiction and depression. I’m not a psychologist, but I have eyes and a heart, to see.

I sometimes wonder about the nature of my loved ones, with all their crazy behaviors, including drug use, and the accompanying altered states of consciousness they constantly seek. In some cultures, altering consciousness is done in a controlled environment, with guidance, and often with substances. My understanding of the evolution of a shaman is that the shaman is often perceived as crazy by the others of the tribe, and may themselves think that they are crazy, until they realize that they are actually unusual. They find that once they realize that, yes, those actually are the voices and faces of the spirit world, life is restored to balance. And they embark on their work path. I sometimes wonder if the crazy starry eyed freaks that I always seems to find in my life are shamans in a culture with no established need of their services, yet their unrecognized spiritual calling draws them into an unguided and unstructured relationship with altering consciousness.

I’ve always been fascinated with death, and the dangerous. The poppy juice contains a healing sedative that relieves pain and stress, and yet can kill when indulged in. Though I haven’t shot heroin into my body, I have taken deep draughts of darkness, and reaped what there was to reap from the experience. 

I tend to mythologize my life. To me the poppy is a symbol of that tendency, and a symbol of my individual energy and relationship to existence. Mythologizing one’s life in my definition means to take events that occur and craft them together into divination and/or story line. I have come to this perspective because it has been my consistent experience that the events of my life are uncanny in how they can be crafted into a shockingly coherent and fascinating narrative, with direction, purpose and epic ultimate outcomes. As a story, my life is filled with unique and complex characters, bizarre occurrences, dark beauty and deep magic. As the opiate of my own fascination and imagination relaxes my senses, reality softens into a finely crafted psychedelic tapestry of interweaving and orchestrated experiences. 

This choice of mythologizing my life begs the question of how the story was/is written. Are there unseen hands at work? An equally mystifying question is, how is it that plants exist naturally which provide cures for human ills, or pitfalls for our issues? Is it by design? Do God and the Devil exist in nature? I personally choose to function within existence as if there is a system at work, origins unknown, working on behalf of my success. Though it leaves the question of how unanswered, I have already moved into the choice of working with the clues I find. The poppy symbolizes that charged and effective unfathomable presence of deep, dark, and possibly dangerous magical power. I intend to be the Queen of that.