The Epilepsy Shield Project

Painting #8 EPILEPSY WARRIORS of the Epilepsy Recognition Series.
Here is a painting for us to share showing the public just how many of us are out there. According to the Epilepsy Foundation there are 65 million people living with epilepsy around the world, but they have been using that number for over a decade now, so it must be higher than that because during that time the count in the US alone has gone up by at least 400,000.

Instead of saying “one of millions” I did a play off ONE IN A MILLION by saying “one in millions” and I did not want two OFs that close together “ONE OF MILLIONS OF EPILEPSY WARRIORS.”
with the larger warrior to represent the person sharing it and the small warriors in the background to represent the rest of us. I used shading on the shields to make them look angled to deflect a swords strike of to one side or the other deflecting the force and the blade. The ribbons also show a darker shade on the right side because of the angled surface. For the title line I made the lettering look like metal letters with beveled edges riveted on to go with the metal armor theme.

I think this painting will get lots of interesting comments on the shares and with it on the T-shirts I think it will get lots of comments from strangers, spreading awareness out in public.
I think we should create a more accurate count of people living around the world with epilepsy. If you can get a reliable figure of the number of people in your country fighting it then please put it into a comment, so I can start working on the new count. I know the latest count for the United States is 3.44 million, so I am starting the count there.

Painting #7 EPILEPSY’S STIGMA of the Ending the Stigma series.

We are people with a medical condition who society should not reject for it. When one of us has a seizure in public especially a Tonic Clonic, people still believe the myths instead of the facts. I only put faces on the people making comments to get them to stand out from the crowd and help put emotions with the comments.

Some still believe it is a form of possession which is why I put the Grand Mal comment. The Mal names were dropped because they came from a time when everyone thought epilepsy was a form of possession, translated from French to English it is “Evil” making Grand Mal mean Great Evil and Petite Mal mean Small Evil which you can see if you go to Google Translate and do the translation yourself.

Some just think it is funny to see someone in any dire situation thing the person is not as important as they are.

Then there are the people who think they should post everything on social media to get as many likes as possible without thinking about our rights and dignity. They do not have the right to share videos of us without our permission, but they do it anyway.

The last one I put is the first thing most people will think when they see a person having a Tonic Clonic seizure which is they’re a drug addict overdosing.

AMAZINGLY, THE LAST PAINTING I POSTED "MUSCULAR EFFECTS" WAS THE 200th EPILEPSY AWARENESS PAINTING
I'VE COMPLETED FOR THE EPILEPSY SHIELD PROJECT!
Chris Arceneaux