Michelle Johnson Major
My name is Michelle Major.
I am a mother, teacher and a portrait artist.
I am also a domestic violence survivor.
In August, 2008 my husband took a butcher knife and slashed ninety-four of my paintings before attempting to murder me by strangling me to unconsciousness. He strangled me, beat me, and left me for dead on our hallway floor. After an eight hour manhunt, he was arrested, and he told police that once released, he would hunt me down, kill me, and take our five week old baby.
This last year of my life has been an adventure, to say the least. I lived in fear for my life while my abuser was free on bond. I thought I would have relief from that fear once he was sentenced, yet now he is a free man after serving a twenty-eight day prison sentence. Yes, you read that correctly, days. I have lived a life of wearing sunglasses, hats, changing cars, varying my routine, changing my address, fleeing my home, and much more due to fear of being killed by my husband. Yet an amazing transformation happened to me throughout this last year. I made a conscious choice not to remain a victim and live in fear for my life. I spent two years of my life being controlled by an abuser and I would not let him have that control and power of me ever again.
When my husband destroyed my artwork, he told me he was going to take what I loved the most from me. Days later, as I looked around the home that the police referred to as a crime scene, I had no idea that the butchered paintings and bruises on my throat would save another woman’s life, yet that is exactly what I have done as an activist for domestic violence awareness. I have moved from the role of victim to survivor. I have decided to become an advocate for shining the light on an ugly societal taboo that lurks behind many doors and many homes in our nation: domestic violence. I realized that I myself could continue to physically hide behind heavy drapes and doors and peek through my blinds at night. I could sit back and blame the judicial system and remain angry and remain victimized by the whole lacking process the courts have for protecting victims. I could be consumed with hate, fear, bitterness and more negative emotions, but I chose another path. I chose a path that was lit by the truth that comes from sharing my story, my reactions to the abuse, and my healing process. This path is a road of healing and hope.
I developed an organization called Be A Voice Arts. BAVA is me, Michelle Johnson Major. It is my story and it is my art. My show depicts various self portraits I painting during my abusive marriage and afterward. The paintings are tortured and emotional representations of fear and terror and the feeling of being trapped in a helpless, hopeless situation.
In addition to showing portraits depicting the pain of abuse, I now show many of my portraits that were butchered by my husband. “How Do You Paint the Portrait of Domestic Violence?” shows the paintings my husband destroyed in an effort to bring awareness to the ugly secret many women are hiding.
Viewing these works of art is very powerful and I know lives are being touched by my story the more it is shared. It is my hope that by shining a light on this secret called domestic violence, that for someone, the cycle of abuse can be broken. If my story can save the life of one victim, losing my entire body of work will have been worth it all.
***
Michelle’s website is Be A Voice Arts.
Artist’s note:
For Domestic Violence Awareness Month, BAVA is hosting an “Artist Trading Card” challenge. An ATC is a small card, about the size of a playing card on which people write, draw, paint, collage, use photographs and more. ATC’s are a worldwide art form where people often have ‘groups’, create ‘themes’, and then create miniature works of art to trade and collect. They are almost like modern day baseball cards to some folks!
The theme is “I HAVE A VOICE!”
My creative vision for these ATC’s is this:
I want to create a work of art where the cards hang on my wedding dress as an interactive gallery piece. The reason I am creating this wedding VOICE piece comes as an outcropping of a painting I did called “Til Death”. ‘Til Death’ is a painting of me as a bride, tortured and hopeless, with ‘X’s” over the mouth to symbolize the secret and shame and inability to speak up during a relationship of abuse. After viewing that portrait, one would think that my wedding dress would be a symbol of the loss of hopes and dreams for a marriage and a future, yet in actuality, the dress will be transformed to symbolize the literal artistic VOICES that have come together as one to “Speak Up Against Domestic Violence”. I want to hang all the submitted cards from the dress skirt and viewers can come up, turn the cards over in their hands, move around the piece and experience the “Voices!” I am hoping to generate enough response to fill up the skirt. I think it will be a very powerful piece and full of hope!
Help me fill the dress with YOUR artistic voice. You may save a life. Please visit the BAVA website for more details.
22 Responses to “Michelle Johnson Major”
Leave a Reply
This is crazy, this is crazy….I have a series of ATCs I did with regard to my own abuse. While I’m not quite ready to turn those loose into the world yet, I’d be happy to reconstruct one or two, or even something fresh, to contribute.
Thank you SO much for sharing of yourself. I cannot imagine walking into my studio and finding everything therein destroyed. I can’t wait to see the fruits of this project. It’s just feels so hopeful to me.
Being a survivor is a testament to your strength. I hope you inspire someone else to do the same.
Thank you for sharing.
You are a shining light! I can hear it all the way over here. What you went through was unimaginable. But I hear joy in your voice. You are a survivor and you are determined to make more survivors!!!
I am truly humbled
Wow. No one has taken my breath away in a very long time. You are incredible.
He failed, you know.
He wasn’t trying to take away your body of work, he was trying to take away your sense of self. But he miscalculated. For as much of yourself as you poured out on those canvasses, they were not a fraction of the self that created them. And in taking a butcher knife to them he thought he destroyed them. In the way they speak to the masses, to the visitors to your exhibits, he made them more powerful than ever. In the way they speak to you, and changed your view of your self, he made them priceless. I wonder if that’s occurred to him.
Most often the stories that come to VU break my heart. The inhumanity of them either makes me want to curl up and die or beat someone senseless (depends on the day I guess). But once in a while a story like yours appears here that leaves me feeling hopeful, that renews my faith in the human spirit and keeps me from throwing in the towel. And those all-too-rare stories are so very important. Not because they keep me from caving in, but because they deliver a message of hope to those who are still groping in the darkness.
They offer a vision of a future to people who desperately need to believe in a future. Who need more than anything to know that if you can get there, there is life on the other side. Life like what’s in the brochure, not the travesty that they’ve been living in for so long.
As I was reading your opening I didn’t get the same feeling of dread I usually do. Because you didn’t “back into the story”, you set the table with undiluted truth, no excuses, no evasion, just fact. And I knew in the first few lines that you were going to be okay by the time you were done telling the story. And in bringing that message to others, more victims will come to the place you have already reached. A place that, if not perfect, is at least peaceful. So on their behalf, I thank you.
PS: Your project reminded me of one I heard about here in my area just recently. It’s a show — actually a series of shows — called “Speaking Without Tongues”, and while it’s not always all about domestic violence, it is in this case. If you live in the Raleigh-Durham (NC) area, the exhibit is at Duke University through 11/14. Visit http://www.hiddenvoices.org/ for complete details.
I am breathless with this and SO proud to witness.
You are an inspiration. God bless you!
Wow — kudos to you for being strong enough to not only stand up and speak out but to REACH out to others as both a volunteer and as an advocate for your organization.
And as I read early on about the slashed photos I hoped that there was a way those could be used to get the message across — and then I read that they are. That’s AWESOME! Awesome because he couldn’t silence your work and doubly awesome because he actually did himself a disservice because they speak a language that words can’t about this ugly scourge that is domestic violence.
Cringing in the shadows and living in anonymity is not living. Glad to hear you’ve come through that. I know you are a stronger person and I’m sure a better mother as a result. You’re truly someone for your child to look up to.
I am so moved and inspired by your strength and action. Bravo!
Your artwork is tragically beautiful.
Thank you for sharing your story and for continuing to help other survivors.
I am so sorry for the horror you endured, and for the miscarriage of justice that was done to you in its aftermath.
But I am so inspired and awed by your voice and your determination. You are a powerful force!
Michelle….YOU ROCK!!!
Although bruises fade, the horror of those butchered paintings tell a powerful story. Somehow, I knew you would recognize this. I am in awe of you. Thank you.
Thank you for sharing your story, but more so, thank you for being so brave and becoming an advocate. Good for you.
Thank you for having the courage to not only survive and share your story but to also move forward and become an inspiration to others.
This is so powerful. What an encouragement to hear your strong voice.
I can’t tell you how much your story and art means to me.
We are different but also the same. For me, my abuser hasn’t been a man. It’s been life itself. I’ve avoided living, because of my fear and sometimes hatred of it.
Your words and paintings help me not give in to my own demons. To not let anxiety and depression rule my life.
Thank you.
I always found it remarkable (Maybe not so much these days) that it was always something of mine that was broken, smashed, before it turned on me. I have an idea, for a card. Hopefully I can get it out in the next day or two.
Out of everything that was ruined, the worst was a Christmas tree that I had since I my daughter was born. Along with numerous collectible glass ornaments. One Christmas I was dragged over that tree with fragments of glass sticking in various parts of my body. The branches and lights were yanked out and strewn all over the living room. It wasn’t a holiday it was a living nightmare as I was beaten unconsious.
Years later my now husband would buy another tree in hopes of replacing that one. I tried to appreciate the new tree, after all it was given with love. Yet my daughter and I somehow missed the old one still packed up in the basement. To us it was a lifetime of memories, nothing would ever compare.
Last year I took that tree out, fixed the base the best way I knew how and strung lights on it, and a new collection of ornaments my daughter and I had started to gather once again. I have tears in my eyes telling this. That tree was the most beautiful sight you have ever seen. It was a testament of what had come before and what lie ahead. I actually posted the tree online and no one could believe the history it had, nowhere was it evident.
My card would be a picture of that tree. It speaks for my spirit, still beautiful after the abuse, still proud and still making memories.
Just as you are a living testament of a survivor. Thank you! (Hugs)Indigo
thank you for leading me to this link. youre inspiring voice will help me keep mine. i am blessed to have found you.
Thank you so much, I found this link in a desperate moment, trying to tell myself that there are other women out there who have achieved to recover themselves after this experience. You are truly inspiring.
Michelle –
Thank you for sharing your story and for taking a stand against domestic violence. Men who abuse and control and rage are cowards, bullies and inhuman. There are many women I know right now who are in dangerous situations and afraid to leave. Many claim they are staying for the sake of the children. That statement is puzzling to me, because I’ve seen too many cases of men who began with violence toward a spouse, later also abused their children.
Bless you, and I pray for wholeness, peace and safety for you and your family…
Jeff
Thank you for your story. You are a very strong woman.