Something Raw, Something Real

I put myself in kind of a time-out this year. Not as a punishment, more like an experiment, or a test.

Have you ever looked at a pattern, repeating perfectly, and you just get this uncontrollable urge to interrupt it? Like you just want to mess it up. Throw a wrench in. Give it a good shake, just to see what breaks and what holds.

I have realized this happens to me when there is too much order in my life, too much routine, too many rules. Because my art was also my business, making art became production. Over five years in, I was in this endless stream of ordering prints, signing prints, numbering prints. Order cards, package cards, paint, paint, paint, post, post, post, mat, frame, mat, frame. Glass order, frame order, one festival, two festivals, twelve festivals. Keep up, don’t stop, don’t fall behind, stay relevant, make content, market yourself, follow the trends, feed the algorithm, feed the audience.

Then, burnout.

Never have I ever been so grateful for burnout. A distress signal. My nervous system’s white flag. My body’s built-in emergency brake.

In my last newsletter, I talked about what happens when we step back and let ourselves be reclaimed, rewilded. Now I want to talk about what has been blooming when I took a break from being an art machine.

Over the course of the last five months, I have been painting, but slowly. I wanted to intentionally reconnect with my practice through play. Pressure-less. Only challenging if I want it to be, not because I feel like I need to keep up with some self-induced or culturally set finish line.

It’s all been very low stakes. Sitting down to paint with a cup of coffee, sketching out a piece here and there. I even treated my paper differently.

I taped it off, not caring if I used the whole sheet, or half, or a quarter. I had no intention of doing anything impressive. Little studies, some larger pieces that felt like actual emotional expression. Then long breaks in between, no shaming myself for taking a week or two off.

The miraculous thing was that whenever I returned to my workbench, it was because I actually wanted to paint. Not because I had an event coming up. Not because I felt like I was losing a good streak if I stopped. I took time to refill my cup and I painted because I felt like it.

Another new development was that I also stopped putting energy into prints and cards. This is something I have been sitting on for a long time… I have looked at these piles upon piles of prints sitting in my studio, sometimes wishing I had never put energy or money into them at all, then finally deciding that I would much rather spend the precious energy I do have actually painting. So I am happy to say I have handed over most of my remaining inventory to my beloved stores and am down to mainly original work here…

I have spent weeks and months with my paintings sitting upright in my studio so that I could gaze at them, falling in love with them day after day. I spent the summer mulling over ideas on how I wanted to frame them or not. Slowly, something started to emerge. A new way. A presentation I had once thought about but in all honesty have been scared to try because it’s so different than the way I typically present my work.

I wanted to do something simple, raw, and a little unpolished. Effortless in a way that feels organic and down to earth.

So that is exactly what I am doing. Stripping my art down to a place where it feels raw and real.

I have over 30 paintings that I am prepping to bring to Chester Bowl Fall Festival on September 19th. Nearly all of them have deckled or raw edges. They feel touched by human hands.

I have been mounting them onto backing board and will be offering these sweet little pieces unframed. The lovely part is that the backing board that the pieces are mounted to are the perfect size to fit into a standard sized frame. Because of that, I can offer them at an accessible price point. The sizes range from 5x7” to 8x10” to 11x14” and 16x20”. There are a lot to choose from.

The pieces themselves are a celebration of languid moments from the summer, reflecting, and hanging onto a slow and lingering chapter that I know will not last forever.

There are 10 panoramic studies of the BWCA and North Shore. I also have 9 mini wildflower studies that are just so sweet and lovely.

The rest are some other miniature moody landscapes, as well as some larger golden hour paintings and wildflower studies that I will offer mounted but unframed. Scroll down to see some of my first couple pieces that I have mounted and keep an eye on your inboxes for more updates!