Hanging Ugly Art

I was never prepared to be an artist. I think any of us could say this of any journey or venture in life — that we’re not really prepared for the way the road will wind and climb and fall and us with it. Any chance we take on ourselves, any instance of stretching ourselves or branching out onto a new path brings us face to face with our very selves, with truth. So truly, what I wasn’t prepared for, was how being an artist would force me to face me.

When we bring together the concept of art coming from the depths of an individual soul and the mere fact that life is dynamic and ever-changing, the result of creative expression is unexpected — at least, that’s how it’s been for me. I don’t know if that’s how it’s always going to be or if it’s part of me being relatively green when it comes to this, but it’s been my experience that I never really know what’s going to flow out of me from day to day. In the simplest terms, there have been times I have sat down to paint, filled with inspiration only to step away dissatisfied, and also times where I have dragged myself to my easel only to surprise myself entirely.

Between the months of January through March of this year I’ve found myself cocooning, turning inward. I stopped wanting to share my process, and everything that came out of me felt like a secret I needed to keep close to my chest, that included my artwork. This need to turn inward came upon me quite naturally and instinctively and actually, unavoidably. I found myself coming face to face with aspects of me that I had learned to hate throughout the course of my life. The ugly bits — my rage, my deepest fears, my greatest pains. I took them all to the woods to cry it out, to my journal to write, and to my easel to paint. It’s been a process of stripping myself down, parsing out the things that are not me and separating them from what is. Truth.

Through this, I have created a lot of art that I have hated. A lot. Piles. I’ve looked at those piles with disdain and asked myself if I’d lost my ability to create anything beautiful. I tucked those dreadful pieces away in a place where I wouldn’t have to look at them and them at me.

But a little over a week ago, something shifted. I pulled out that dreaded pile in a moment of reflection and I no longer saw the result of a failed attempt to create beauty, I saw a story. I saw my anger and my beliefs and my opinions and my forgetfulness and my stubbornness and all the things I’d once learned to hate because someone else didn’t like those things about me and I’d taught myself to hate them too. I saw all of these parts of me, painted on paper and realized I’d treated my rejected art the exact same way I’d treated the parts of myself I’d rejected.

I found myself facing a dilemma. These moments, the emotions, the things I didn’t like about myself, they’re going to exist whether I like them or not. So I have a choice. I can hate them, or I can learn to love them solely based on the fact that, they’re a product of my life, of my journey, my story.

Like art, the lives we live are colored by our experiences. Composition shaped by our pain and suffering and joy and triumph and all the mundane moments in between. To celebrate this, I have matted and framed and hung pieces on my walls that I once hated but grown to love simply because it was something that flowed out of me. An experience is just an experience, a perspective, just a perspective, neither good nor bad, it just is.

It is so important to love the parts of ourselves that we have been taught to hate. For me, my deepest healing and greatest growth has happened in the moments I’ve danced with the skeletons in my closet and sat with my own agonizing darkness and learned to love it all simply because it’s mine.

In this release of thirteen original works, is my truth. A raw result of owning my life in its wholeness and celebrating my journey on this plane of existence for everything that it is.

View Newest Release

Reverie

One Hundred Days of Painting