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WELCOME TO THE GALLERY
Paintings
This collection of work represents the paintings I feel proudest of in my 5-year artist journey. Each has a special meaning and story. Please enjoy these images, and click on them to read their full story.
Fun fact: they are arranged in chronological order, so you'll gain a visual and intellectual understanding of my whole painting journey by taking them all in!
The Beam
I painted “The Beam” after I got fired from my third nonprofit and decided to pursue the path of being a full-time artist. Suddenly free to do whatever I wanted all day, every day, I started to feel doubt weighing heavily on my chest in the form of a dark Box. The Box, to me, represents the artificial, rectangular order and structure of society that moves us away from our organic nature and towards “the machine”. Away from the spontaneity and creativity of the wild, and towards the standardization and scripting of bureaucracy.
I realized how afraid I was of structure, because all my life, I had only been stuck in other people’s: the box of the classroom, the box of the nonprofit office. Those structures had forced me into ways of talking, of acting, of dressing even, that made me feel small and robotic and so unlike myself.
But as I meditated on the open-ended stretches of time now in front of me and my struggle to fill them, the voice of my higher self said, structure can help you.
I knew it was true, because my art was proving that to me. Sketching out a structural foundation for my paintings, making it precise and measured and intentional while taking inspiration from the sacred geometry and mathematics of the universe, actually helped me focus and create more freely on top of it, colors and new lines and shapes emerging organically, the perfect union of structure and flow.
As I realized that I could in fact structure my life any way I wanted to, and that I knew how to create the structure I wanted, I cried - grief for all the years of being trapped, and gratitude for now being free.
As I cried, I felt the Box heavy on my chest dissolve, cracking and being blown open by the light of Life.
I took this concept to my first in-person art seminar in March of 2023 - the Mechanics of Nature with Mark Henson and Amanda Sage. Drawing a 3D box getting blown open by life was a pretty difficult thing to depict, and both teachers helped me a ton with it. By the end of the workshop, I had “finished” the piece, but I still wasn’t satisfied with it, and I didn’t know why.
It wasn’t until months and months had passed, and I went to my first Burning Man and my second in-person seminar with Amanda that I returned to the piece. Fully charged by the energy of Life from my new experiences, I realized that’s what the painting needed: more of ~that~ energy. I started painting dots emanating from the beams of light. Then explosive electric bolts reminiscent of those I had painted in my self-portrait. Then, struck by inspiration, I covered both my hands in white-yellow paint and loosely dabbed around the Box with my fingers.
There. Now, it was done.
The Beam. If you’re ever feeling hopelessly trapped in a Box, call upon the Beam: the wisdom of nature’s power, of your nature’s power. Focus your attention on what lights you up. Dissolve the structures that don’t serve you… and build your own, from the ground up.
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