I struggled over what to say about my art and why I make it, wishing I could sound knowledgeable and deep, maybe even COOL for the first time in my life--ha. But I finally settled on the truth, hoping that, perhaps, my experience can help or inspire someone else.
I started painting after a major trauma that I had neither the desire nor the capacity to process in words. This is ironic because I’m an author with 24 novels published—words are my jam. Usually. But this trauma was new, deeply personal, and I just...couldn’t. Couldn’t write it. Couldn’t speak it. As a lifelong introvert (a gregarious loner, I call myself), I’m an under-sharer rather than an over-sharer, so I spoke to basically no one about everything going on inside. I searched for something, anything that would settle the fear in my chest and still the racing thoughts in my brain when nothing else could, and I found it in colors and shapes and lines and paint tubes. Art saved me, and I mean that with zero hyperbole.
The process of making my pieces is completely organic. I plan nothing beyond the color I start with. The last thing I want is for my critical brain to put its two cents in before the piece tells me what it wants to be, so I just let it happen and follow the lines and colors wherever they go. I have achieved that blissful flow state more since I started painting than I’ve ever felt with anything else--writing, yoga, even meditation. I have a maximalist aesthetic, a neurographic leaning, and a deep love for saturated colors, experimentation, and weirdness. What you see when you look at one of my paintings is a person surviving, recovering, thriving, growing, and glowing.
I hope my art is as therapeutic for you as it is for me.
