Recently I was asked, “What inspires you to paint? How did you start painting? Honestly, I have a hard time with a short answer here without it sounding like I’m just being an asshole. “I don’t know, I just do” but it’s much deeper than that. It’s a whole other life breathing inside me created from itself. A zygote, the beginning stages of a life I haven’t met yet. It has its own personality and the excitement that comes with the unknown (at least for me) is exhilarating. Curiosity is my way of life. If I stay curious about what is happening within my life, it’s exciting, it’s joyful and simple. It’s a question of “what’s next”, a learning something new because aren’t we a different person everyday? A different person when we show up to our canvas or paper? Every piece is a reflection of my internal life. I paint to get to know myself, to understand my relationship with people as they respond to my work. Sometimes, I am getting too involved with how others respond. I get too involved with my own judgments and ideas about my work when I often forget that what’s actually working is the in-between.
I believe art exist in the in between. The threshold. The things we don't say or even know how to express in words. It's the unspoken language that we know as being moved, or called to do our work. Art is a passionate paradox.
It will make you question what your soul wants you to do in the moment you're connecting with the movement; while simultaneously realizing it's existing in stillness.
It will take your breath away and realize you've just taken your first breath.
It will catapult you into the human condition. Actualizing the certainty of impermanence. Belittling your small mind to think the tasks you make important are actually important.
To tap into the flow of the energetic pull. The lull that stirs up angst, the business that drowns the very being that belongs in the vessel you carry. The rejection.
Art is life. It is who you are. It is what you uniquely bring to the universe to make us all live supported.
By doing what your heart calls, is serving all of us.
The things we don't say, keep us frozen in time. The things we define, erase all the intentions within our work of personal evolution.
Art is a beautiful juxtaposition. (I love juxtaposition in art, so much)
So this, this is what moves me. The magic of the threshold. It’s a being of its own. Everything and nothing. It’s a deeply driven curiosity of the human condition. I know in my heart, as long as I am human I will stay curious about this space where everything and nothing makes sense. It intrigues me, the unknown, while simultaneously pissing me off. When my paint meets the surface I’m working with, a relationship is formed one that is still unknown, still evolving. As I push the paint around I witness the things we cannot put into words. I witness the magic of the in-between. The power of curiosity and the vulnerability it creates. A sliver of truth twinkling in the darkness as the world that you thought you knew just showed you a new way.