During the Covid quarantine, I took on a 100 day challenge, where I promised to create art every day. Although my writing was more prolific than every, due to big life changes and health challenges, it had been five years since I'd painted regularly, since I was creating an oracle deck in collage, or since I was making my flying girls, or painting in my journal for my own enjoyment.
It had been so long since I had painted that I really didn't know where I wanted to go or what I wanted to say, but those hundred days allowed me to explore art again without any expectations, allowed me to get familiar with art again, allowed me to show up at the page. At the end of the hundred days, I had nowhere near figured out where I wanted to go with art, but I had regained my painting habit, so I took on another hundred days challenge, and then, another one.
By the third hundred, I had, well, discovered abstract painting. For the first time in my decades long art practice and study, I was really diving into abstraction, and I had to deep dive.
I found abstraction to be extremely challenging, more challenging than any other type of art I had done before, if I have to admit it. I painted, and I posted my paintings to instagram, and they weren't very good. But I was ready to keep going, and I committed to a 365 day challenge this time, where I would paint every day for an entire year. I was finally figuring out the style, finally figuring out what I wanted to say and how I wanted to say it, and I was growing as an artist.
I am now on my second year long challenge, and it's no longer a challenge to paint every day, it's a practice.
Every morning, before anyone else gets up, I go into my studio and I paint. My style has coalesced into an abstract expressionist, often landscape inspired, luminous and lively organic representation of memory, emotion, philosophy and spirit.
I have developed a body of work that encompasses multiple collections; Pastoral, Nocturne, Tired Girls, Rosy Glow, Inside and Low Down or Country Abstracts, Broken Open, Adventure and We Make the Road by Walking.
I have also recently joined an artist's collective, Rainbow Springs Art, in Dunnellon Florida, where I'm showing in the gallery as well as teaching classes.
It had been so long since I had painted that I really didn't know where I wanted to go or what I wanted to say, but those hundred days allowed me to explore art again without any expectations, allowed me to get familiar with art again, allowed me to show up at the page. At the end of the hundred days, I had nowhere near figured out where I wanted to go with art, but I had regained my painting habit, so I took on another hundred days challenge, and then, another one.
By the third hundred, I had, well, discovered abstract painting. For the first time in my decades long art practice and study, I was really diving into abstraction, and I had to deep dive.
I found abstraction to be extremely challenging, more challenging than any other type of art I had done before, if I have to admit it. I painted, and I posted my paintings to instagram, and they weren't very good. But I was ready to keep going, and I committed to a 365 day challenge this time, where I would paint every day for an entire year. I was finally figuring out the style, finally figuring out what I wanted to say and how I wanted to say it, and I was growing as an artist.
I am now on my second year long challenge, and it's no longer a challenge to paint every day, it's a practice.
Every morning, before anyone else gets up, I go into my studio and I paint. My style has coalesced into an abstract expressionist, often landscape inspired, luminous and lively organic representation of memory, emotion, philosophy and spirit.
I have developed a body of work that encompasses multiple collections; Pastoral, Nocturne, Tired Girls, Rosy Glow, Inside and Low Down or Country Abstracts, Broken Open, Adventure and We Make the Road by Walking.
I have also recently joined an artist's collective, Rainbow Springs Art, in Dunnellon Florida, where I'm showing in the gallery as well as teaching classes.
