Fumbling Forward …

Often we make art because we can’t talk. We express ourselves visually so we don’t have to find the words.

But what is happening now feels like it needs both - words and pictures.

I feel like the words will drive the pictures forward.

When I first started making art, it was about making beautiful things. That is what I wanted more than anything. So I studied and learned. I found out how to make pleasing compositions and how to mix colours and how to use my newfound knowledge to orchestrate an experience for the viewer. It was exciting to work all that out.

But over time, it started to feel like I was deliberately creating a persona in my work in the same way as I had created a persona in life. Over time I had rubbed down my sharp edges and moulded myself into whatever I thought people wanted me to be.

I had changed myself to fit into school and into various jobs and into foreign cultures and into the role of daughter and wife and friend and colleague and employee and boss. But along the way I had lost track of my true self.

Who was I before I made all those adaptations?

My job now is to find that out …. I am starting with journal paintings. These are paintings I work on for a set period of time, adding to them each day, until I decide they are done. There is no judgement with these paintings and no desire to make something beautiful. They simply are what they are.

As you can see from this first painting, that means something raw and unpolished, but also I think, something bursting with life and with truth.

I don’t have any answers yet about who I am, but I hope to find out in the process of making this new work. Stay tuned :)