Just like other human beings, artists change a lot as time passes. We have lives that flow through the ordinary channels. We begin and end relationships, change apartments or jobs, and make discoveries about life and humanity. We’re a constant river, always becoming someone new, our presence in the world unfolding and unfolding.
One of my earliest works as an artist. Little did I know that art would begin to occupy such a significant role in my life.
For those of us who specifically express through a creative channel, change in our lives manifests in what we create. As a visual artist, I’ve watched my art evolve over the years. The tools I use to make my art have changed little, but what I create has grown in leaps and bounds. I love that I’ve organized my virtual portfolio by year. I like to go back and see who I was in past years by looking at what I created during that time. Each piece symbolizes something that I was working on internally. Often, I was struggling with something very dark and difficult. My emergence from a difficult state tends to be paralleled by the completion of a work of art.
2019 was a very significant year in my life because it was a foundational break in my preconceived life path. Having initially decided to quit my job in the corporate sector for medical reasons, I took my newfound freedom and ran with it. My success as an artist had been steadily growing for years, and I was beginning to show my art professionally. I decided, very seriously, to pursue art as my full-time career. At the same time, recovering from illness and an interrelated, deep and personal struggle, I hit the ground running but was very unsure of myself. I didn’t quite trust that I knew what I was doing, even though I was accepted into every gallery show I applied to, was welcomed as a visiting artist at a prestigious out-of-state event, and secured my biggest commission yet.
Transcendence, 2019. Private commission. To request a commission, please contact the artist directly.
I was experiencing such radiant joy at finally giving myself permission to do what I loved. I was also scared as hell. Mostly I was in denial that I was scared as hell, or maybe I was 100% okay with being scared as hell because I would rather follow my heart for the first time in my life instead of live the rest of my life in a perpetual state of frustration and longing. I had been desperately unhappy at my previous job, and the prospect of looking for yet another job in the field I had been educated in felt like I was damning myself to eternal torment. And it wasn’t just that I wanted to become a professional artist. More and more, I began to feel as though I was being called to it. Both as an act of profound personal healing and as a revolutionary act urgently needed by a world in its time of need.
Even so, I really didn’t know what I was doing yet. I wasn’t a seasoned businessperson, so I was playing everything by ear; I didn’t have any kind of strategy put together, I didn’t know the first thing about strategy. But I needed to get my bills paid, so there was a lot of pressure on me. I couldn’t just mess around. So I was trying to put a bunch of puzzle pieces together – social media, gallery shows, public appearances, creating new products, networking both locally and nonlocally – full force, for the first time ever. And of course, I was also trying to create as much art as I possibly could, out of necessity as well as eagerness. I was moving as fast as I could, trying to process and comprehend it all.
The year ended both as a success and a failure. I had created and done so much. I wasn’t an internationally acclaimed artist, but I had certainly learned what I was doing right and what I was doing wrong. Above all else, I had gained immense insight into the herculean effort required to be successful as a professional artist, and was beginning to awaken to the fact that I was willing to work for it.
In 2019, I began to open myself to who I really am. That isn’t to say I’m quickly approaching an answer to the question Who am I? I don’t think that’s a question anyone can ever fully answer. But by giving myself the license to do what I really wanted to do, I began to unravel years and years of repression. I started to look myself in the proverbial eye instead of shrinking away into a version of myself that was presentable, but not really the fundamental, unabridged, passionate, strong, FULL VOLUME me.
Find Your Center, 2019. I began work on this piece while struggling to make peace with myself during a time when I was experiencing a lot of uncertainty and self-doubt.
Here now in 2020, particularly with the changes that the quarantine has wrought, I find myself still in a period of self-discovery and self-reflection. At the same time, I also see myself emerging from the soft cocoon that had previously been my relative safe zone. As much as I grew last year, I was still unrefined, undeveloped, and rather shy. This year, instead of cautious venturing, I am beginning to open more widely to being present in the world. Indeed, this includes sharing some of my personal story on my blog! All in all, I am beginning to trust that it’s okay for me to share who and what I am.
I am a visionary artist, and I am passionate about healing, transforming, and evolving. It is medicine to me to continue to create. I hope that what I create awakens and inspires you, too.