Kerry Payne Stailey

In Dear Ethanol, Kerry Payne Stailey creates a world inspired by true accounts of a life altered by alcohol. It is a tale of descent and redemption. Hers included. Her muses offer wisdom, honesty and courage, sharing tiny beautiful truths as they resurrect their lives, alcohol-free. Working with miniatures, Kerry reimagines and illustrates their confessions, and hers. One image a day. One day at a time.

A posthumous tribute to the artist’s father who battled addiction to alcohol and died by suicide, this ode to the bitter taste of ethanol is also is a response to ‘big alcohol’; the producers, distributers and marketers who knowingly promote their deadly product as an essential part of an adventurous, glamorous life, and in some cases, even as ‘healthy’ and ‘safe’.

In an era in which people are told they should enjoy drinking, but not become addicted to it, despite the fact that it is highly addictive, it seems alcohol is the only drug in the world where somebody is seen as diseased if they ‘opt out’.

The substance is celebrated. Those who get sick from using it are stigmatized.

Worldwide, alcohol misuse syndrome (AUD) is rising. 3 million deaths every year result from harmful use of alcohol, representing 5.9% of all deaths. Binge drinking, especially among women, increased significantly during the Covid-19 pandemic with research finding heavy drinking among women rose 41%. Alcohol is a known group 1 carcinogen. The harmful use of alcohol is a causal factor in more than 200 disease and injury conditions. In 2018, illegal drug overdoses killed about 18,000 people in the US, while drinking too much alcohol killed 95,000. Alcohol use is present in one quarter of all suicides.

Yet alcohol is legal. Alcohol is everywhere. Alcohol is idolized. And alcohol is killing us by the millions.

Follow the project, read the confessions at Instagram @dearethanol

“There is an epidemic.  One that claims a million victims a year, leaving twenty million fractured lives in its wake.It is largely unspoken of and shrouded in stigma.Those left behind are the Suicide Survivors. These are their stories. Their stories are mine.  On June 12, 2001, my father scrawled a goodbye note on a scrap of paper, strung a rope to a rafter, stepped off a stool and ended his life.  For six years I never spoke of it, determined to bury my pain by living every day with a full agenda. It was a strategy that almost worked, pulling me forward in awkward strides. This was his choice and I refused to allow it to change me.  But of course it did. How could it not? ” [Kerry Payne]

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Each year, 1 million people worldwide die by suicide — more than in war, terrorist activities and homicides — making it the tenth leading cause of death in the world.  For every person that dies by suicide at least 20 more will attempt to do so, yet despite the high rate, little attention is paid to the phenomenon.

At least 90 percent of people who kill themselves have a diagnosable (but often undiagnosed) and treatable psychiatric illness – such as depression, bipolar disorder, or some other depressive illness.  In many cases, it is a treatable, preventable tragedy.  Although most suicides are caused by mental health problems, mental health-care allocations often comprise less than 2 per cent of national health budgets.

Worldwide, the prevention of suicide has not been adequately addressed due to a lack of awareness of suicide as a major problem and the taboo in many societies to discuss it openly. In fact, despite a 60% worldwide increase in deaths by suicide in the past 45 years, only a few countries have included prevention of suicide among their priorities.

Greater attention must be given to suicide prevention, such as increased funding for education and research, help lines and mental health facilities.  According to the World Health Organization, it is clear that suicide prevention requires intervention also from outside the health sector and calls for an innovative, comprehensive multi-sectoral approach, including both health and non-health sectors, e.g. education, labour, police, justice, religion, law, politics, the media.

I will continue this work and by sharing my story and those of my fellow survivors, it is my hope that others will learn from our experiences, speak up about their own, and seek comfort and support in the knowledge that they are not alone.

The silence, secrecy and stigma that surrounds suicide has to end and if my work prevents a single death or helps one survivor avoid the mistakes I made, it will give some meaning to a loss that fourteen years later, I still struggle to make sense of.

I was not called to be a mother
all the years I might have been.  
 
now there is him
and in his eyes I see them, 
the children I never had. 

calendars turn
a battle of wills

forgive me, love
my body has won.

so quietly
we grieve
the babies I bleed.
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ARTIST STATEMENT

'The Children (I Never Had)’ explores the bloody battle of infertility, of hope and loss, played out monthly by women everywhere in their fruitless quest to become mothers. 

Our year of reproductive discontent was poetic and ugly and bittersweet, so like the melancholy I carry for the babies I did not. 

These are the children I imagined would be ours, and the menstrual blood that defied us, every twenty-eighth day.

"Once in a while, in the middle of an ordinary life, love gives you a fairy tale." -Unknown

They met at a photo festival in Virginia. It was love at first sight. 

They agreed to go slow. 5 days later he came for dinner and never again left. 

This is their story of Instant Love.

My Father’s Daughter

“Everything beautiful was nothing I deserved, for shame is its own veil, and veils the world as much as its face” -Denis Johnson.  

Delving into issues faced by millions, yet rarely discussed — depression, addiction and suicide — all of which are on the rise worldwide, "My Father's Daughter" honors the period of depression Kerry Payne Stailey entered in her mid-life.   It reflects upon the parallels between her and her father, who died by suicide, addicted to alcohol, and challenges her deeply held fear of meeting a destiny similar to his. 

"My Father's Daughter" is Kerry's tribute to the scars she bears from these experiences, which were not of her choosing, but hers alone to survive.   It is a cathartic release, a full-circle arrival to redemption, in which forgiveness and love have been her way home. 

"(In my sleep I dreamed this poem) Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness.  It took me years to understand that this, too, was a gift" —The Uses of Sorrow, Mary Oliver. 

Soñar Madre (Mothers Dreams) is a body of work produced by Kerry Payne and Natalie Grono: friends, seekers, artists, alchemists, separated by 30,000 miles but continually inspired by one another as women and artists.

In Soñar Madre they have collaborated on Motherhood, from two perspectives. Natalie, mother to two beautiful daughters. Kerry, who learned motherhood is an impossible dream.

The images blended show the menstrual blood that defies one, every twenty-eighth day, in a bloody emotional battle of hope and loss; and the children, birthed in water, raised by the sea, that delight and inspire the other, day after day after day.

An example of how a body of work need never been ‘done’, Soñar Madre has divided roots…. New York and Australia; an earlier project, and an ongoing personal documentation. Inspired by Kerry Payne Stailey’s “The Children (I Never Had)”, originally published on Burn in June, 2014, the inclusion of the evocative and mystical images of the children of Natalie Grono has enabled two artists with distinctly unique visions to jointly produce an entirely new body of work.

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ARTISTS STATEMENTS:

NATALIE:

Long ago you were a dream. 

I awoke
instinctively,
in a storming pool of blood, 
yours and mine. 
We were born, reborn, 
You, to this world.
Me, as mother. 

The flesh of my flesh. The breath of my breath. The dream of my dream. 


KERRY: 

Long ago you were not a dream. 

I was not called to be a mother
all the years I might have been. 
Then there was him, 
our longing was born, 
but nothing more. 
Calendars turn, battle of wills
forgive me, love
this body has won. 

So quietly we grieve
the babies I bleed. 

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For our mothers, your mothers, and theirs.

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PHOTOGRAPHER BIOS

Believing we are surrounded by beauty and magic everyday, Natalie Grono’s photographic storytelling powerfully transports the viewer into her wonderful world as she shares the stories and moments she encounters along the way. With her award winning photojournalistic background shooting for magazines and newspapers, Natalie’s images are regularly published and exhibited worldwide. Natalie lives close to a beautiful beach in Australia and travels as much as she can.

www.nataliegrono.com

Kerry Payne Stailey is an Australian photographer based in New York City. She is drawn to the healing power of photography – a tool she uses for exploring and acknowledging emotions as guides to the path of happiness. Kerry has studied photography, documentary film making and writing at the International Center for Photography, School of Visual Arts, and New York University. She is a Snr Fellow of the United Nations Foundation Instacorp, and her images and projects have been published and exhibited widely worldwide.

www.kerrypayne.net

In "More Beautiful Broken," Kerry brings together images from several distinct bodies of work: Left Behind, My Father's Daughter, The Children (I Never Had), and Instant Love Story.

Her long term project “Left Behind” probes the complicated grief facing those left behind when somebody they love dies by suicide. This intimate narrative is prompted by her own loss. Her father died by suicide in 2001.

"My Father's Daughter" honors the period of depression Kerry entered in her mid-life, reflects upon the parallels between her and her father, and challenges her deeply held fear of meeting a destiny similar to his.

“The Children (I Never Had)” pays tribute to the bloody emotional battle of hope and loss, played out month after month, behind doors, by millions of women worldwide in their fruitless quest to become mothers.

As a counterweight to the more sombre subject matter of these bodies of work, is the joyous and uplifting "Instant Love Story." Here Kerry shares the love she has found with her husband, a story she has been documenting since the day they met. “Instant Love Story” began as a respite to Kerry’s emotionally challenging projects dealing with suicide, depression, addiction and infertility. It became the essential thread that held her together, a daily reminder of the beauty this life can offer. Of the joyful unexpected.

Drawing inspiration from the Japanese tradition of repairing broken pottery with gold, Kerry Payne Stailey honors the fractures we suffer, the threads that bind us, and the seams that stitch us back together, more beautiful, broken. 

“More Beautiful Broken” is a gallery/museum installation comprising multimedia screens, printed images, mixed media portraiture and printed cards inviting viewers to ‘take what they need’.

Longing. Longing for a wave of love that would stir in me. 
That's what makes me clumsy. The absence of pleasure. 
Desire for love. Desire to love. 
--Marion, Wings of Desire

In my 38th year I fled my life
for no good reason, 
so it was said. 

Surely wanting to leave
is reason enough. 

Cities I adored. Idolized. Romanticized. 
In pursuit of magic. In search of home. 

Chapter one. Paris.

Kerry Payne Stailey is available for commissioned assignments worldwide, specializing in event photography. She has a unique ability to capture intimate moments in chaotic scenes.

Her clients include United Nations Foundation, FujiFilm USA, American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, CNN, IF Studio, and Aga Khan Development Network.