The Premise
The works below are from a series called “Letters From A Young Artist”. The series is about pausing to listen to our inner child and hearing the wisdom they have to offer us amidst the tumultuousness and chaos of our adult lives.
How It’s Made
Step 1: Silent meditation in my art studio (garage), specifically asking my inner child “What do you want to tell me? What do I need to hear? You are safe to speak now.”
Step 2: Writing the answers from my meditation either on tiny envelopes or on the canvas I was working with to ground myself and the piece in that phrase.
Step 3: Embodiment of the phrase through music and dance to get the sentiment alive in my body before I even started to get materials on the canvas.
Step 4: Get creating! There were a plethora of mediums I used to tell the stories of the phrases that my little self wanted heard: acrylic paint, gouache, oil pastels, ballpoint pen, spray paint, mini envelopes, old board game pieces (or the cardboard from punching out board game pieces), fabric among other found materials. Importantly, in every piece, I incorporated my emotion lines (the squiggly square lines in a variety of colors). I use emotion lines in most of my artwork and use them to convey the intensity and nature of the emotions I feel while creating a piece (i.e. when the lines are tightly wound, I am expressing more anxious, withdrawn, sad, inward focused emotions. When the lines are wider and more free flowing, I am expressing more expansive emotions like joy, excitement, and freedom).
Reflection
Sometimes, this process started with a fresh canvas, but I mostly started with a piece I’ve already worked on in the past that I was prepared to paint/work over. When I worked with a piece I’ve already created, I let the energy from the past piece dictate what pieces got hidden and what got to be brought forth into the new piece.
As the pieces progressed, I thought more about how the colors, texture, and movement told the stories of the inner child phrases and made sure everything visually going in was intentionally serving that larger story.
The process I used in this series is fairly typical of most of my work. In my irreverent art process, I often layer a new work on top of an old one in order to reflect a multitude of seasons of life within a single piece. Layering works allows my body of work to be a multi-dimensional timeline of my artistic career and engages my curious and mischievous inner-child who urges me to go ahead and mess with the art I’ve created and just play.
For the next phase in my practice, I plan to use my emotion lines combined with stick figure comics to tell the stories of emotional moments in time for myself and my family, and hope to share my process and my work with the world at large.