When I started painting, I had been on Instagram for over a year so I was comfortable with sharing part of myself online. I got very comfortable very quickly sharing the Women of Strength series. Somehow the abstracts were another story. The first time I showed them in public was at West Elm for a pop-up shop and I was floored by the reaction. I remember being overcome with emotion a few days after the show. I just couldn't believe that so many people liked the work. My abstracts always felt like an emotional release. They quite often surprise me, their subjects, the conversations that bring up, the thoughts that surface. I feel like they come from somewhere deep inside me. To have others connect with that work is often startling. When I am expressing these ideas and emotions, quite often before I am ready to say them out loud, I never expected that anyone would understand them or connect with them. But I have come to realized that you don't have to understand exactly what I am putting into the artwork to get something out of it. In fact it is more important that you see something of your own. And yet, as I play or explore in a new direction, I go back to that place of uncertainty. Am I ready to share this? Is it worth sharing? Is it even good? I worry about whether it is saying anything important or if it is just paint without personality. I am sure that lots of artists go through this and when I did the last 100 day project, I realized that every part of the process has value and that it isn't up to me to decide if a work is good or not {to paraphrase Warhol}. I have to remind myself that being uncomfortable is ok, it is part of the process and that I make art to share.
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November 2019
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