PROCESSING.

Finding Beauty In The Details

My art has changed tremendously over the last two years. So much so that my pre-2025 work is not recognizable as my own. The shift was gradual until I gave into it and then it seemed to happen over night. When I first started painting over 20 years ago, I had no idea what I was doing. I don’t know if I’ll ever shake the feeling of an amateur, but at least now I know that my work is directly related to a thread that I’m unraveling within myself that needs to express itself. I wasn’t connecting these dots before. I was just showing up to paint, slapping colors on a daunting blank canvas to figure it out as I went. I just knew that something needed to come out, including the imposter syndrome that my undefined visual language had created. I eventually defined it by describing myself as an artist with an improvisational process. What this really meant is that I was just messing around, trying to find the dots to connect.

The dots eventually showed up, literally…..in the form of circles. They became my paintings’ focal point of choice for years. There was zero pre-meditated thought to this. Maybe I was craving a recognizable form to ground into when I painted. But more than likely it was related to an obsessive interest in cycles that I had formed. It’s a fascination that started years ago when I got a taste of the empowerment that comes from understanding my own female cycle. This is knowledge that I wasn’t equipped with as a young teen. I spent most of my young adult life riding the unpredictable waves of myself, month to month, without any awareness of the patterns. Blaming myself for swings in mood, energy levels and tolerability. Scolding myself for not being more consistent. I somehow learned that consistency was noble + grounded. Inconsistencies flagged weakness + insecurity. So needless to say, it was liberating to find personal patterns within my cycle. They provided insights into my changing needs and gave permission to view the various versions of myself with more compassion.

This taste of pattern recognition eventually spread into every area of my life. Like the new car on your wish list that suddenly appears everywhere on the road, I couldn’t unsee the cyclical rhythms in everything. There were the obvious ones….the cycles of the moon, the seasons, a plant’s life. From there, more nuanced layers to dive into presented themselves (numerology, The Gene Keys…the list goes on). It became an absolute nerdery level of studying systems as if my life GPA depended on it. Getting into anything with this kind of intensity, I don’t care what it is, creates a spark of purpose within. It’s addictive! A gateway drug towards digging + digging until you have to stop and ask yourself what you’re even digging for!

The answer to that question still changes depending on the day. What am I trying to uncover in my relentless studies? Self acceptance….feeling understood…a sense of connection? Each of these answers are true at some point or another. But what became painfully clear was that despite the tools of understanding myself that I was engaged with, I was still wrestling with a paradox. That of having an artist spirit with a messy impulse for expression, inside a hyper analytical mind that craved structure and order. I spent my life assigning them separate responsibilities. Making sure to keep them in their own compartments, unable to reconcile these forces that felt so opposing.

Why do we struggle to hold opposite truths? Picking a lane, maintaining black + white truths, being consistent….these are the assumed pillars of strength. Yet as humans, all we do is hold contradicting truths. The fact that we are brave enough to love deeply, despite the unpredictable impermanence of it all, is the greatest proof that we are more comfortable with paradox than we realize. We’re swimming in it every day. So why can it be so hard to accept that we are a soup of paradoxes ourselves? My digging finally uncovered an acceptance that who I am is ever-changing. But that the structures and systems within and around me continue to cycle through their universal patterns. And by doing so, they provide a stabilizing force of predictability within the mess of life. A beautiful paradox that motivated me to free my parts from their compartments.

To do this, I had to welcome my systematic parts into the studio. It wasn’t the warmest welcome at first. I crave messy moments of surprise that allow paint and water to interact with fluidity. But my analytical side wanted to paint over these fluid paint marks with straight edge lines. It wanted to make a plan and execute it. To feel the gratification of peeling away painters tape for a crisp line and then step back to witness the calm that a solid color field can give. But as soon as it did, my messy parts would scream “real artists produce ethereal movement that evokes emotion. Not planned-out straight edge lines that lack substance”. I don’t know where I picked up this belief, but it was a deeply rooted one (and a ridiculous one at that!).

These sort of beliefs can’t change overnight, but with persistent proof against them, they start to fade. So I kept giving myself evidence that I can do whatever I want in the studio. Why was I relegated to a set of rules that were probably not mine to begin with. So I decided to play around with new things that would allow both sides to merge, paying attention along the way of how I felt throughout the process.

I continued to give myself messy moments by applying instinctive fluid layers of paint onto the blank canvas. This part still feels necessary today, like a warm up before a big game. But from there, I allowed myself to switch into systematic mode, planning where to place solid arch forms over this map of fluid markings. At first this was done with a quick sketch to get a general sense of direction. But I noticed a huge spike in energy around this planning stage. I loved it so much and wanted to extend it more and more. I wanted to sink fully into the opposition of flow and order. For the fluid marks to depend solely on improvisation and the next stage to omit it all together. Both modes have their own sense of freedom. But too much of one or the other can be dangerous. Again, a pattern I’ve witnessed in myself that is now playing out in the studio.

I’ve since settled into a gloriously long planning stage in my process. Colors are mixed and a palette key is made to note the color formulas. Each mixed color is assigned a number. A geometric diagram is drawn to determine where the arch layers will go on the canvas and which color number each will be. Raw canvas strips are painted in the mixed colors, then cut + assembled to create a mini mockup. From there, arch layer widths are measured and marked on the canvas. A t-square ruler guides my pencil to create straight vertical lines along the measured marks. Mason-board arch forms are used to trace the arch shapes. Painters tape is pressed along the vertical lines. And finally, it’s time to apply paint. I take a deep breath to allow a steady hand along the traced arch line with my brush, continuing down until the shape is filled. Then the big reveal: the removal of the painters tape. My favorite part! The finale of all of the planning. My methodical parts rejoice with satisfaction and my messy parts are settled. They know they’ll be utilized again when the process cycles back to the blank canvas.

These processes have taught me that the analytical parts were actually my greatest teachers all along. The things we struggle with the most seem to hold the most potential. The parts that I once reserved for life’s uncreative tasks, are the ones detecting micro moments that direct my emotions towards wonder and awe. In the same way that a pinecone is just a pinecone at first glance…but once you lean in to examine its pattern of symmetry, your heart is instantly awake with connection. In that moment, a flood of love rushes in, clearing the mind of its clutter, giving you a glimpse of the generous partnership between the head and the heart. Two compartments that have been placed at odds, yet designed to work together. A partnership that can provide clarity + connection where there was once confusion and chaos.