How can an artist even begin to describe his or her series? It could be one of the most difficult things EVER. For some it comes more natural but others its expressed more emotionally that words can’t even being to come to mind. For me, It’s like love, or hate, or sadness, or happiness… we can try to describe these feelings as best as we can but it never suffice the real meaning on how you actually feel. Words can just be a label. 

People ask me why this series is about this “woman”. That’s a hard question but I’ve finally come to terms with it. Some of my work isn’t about the subject matter but the colors against the grain of the wood, the splatter of the paint, the line of the pencil, where the drips coincidentally fall. Those things are what are most important to me, perusing an idea and not knowing how it will end up. It could be for better or worse but you wont know unless you work with it and LET GO of it. As someone recently shared her favorite quote to me: You never can tell.

I haven’t openly shared my thoughts about my own work in awhile. My last artist statement about the “Meld” series have been pretty ambiguous, meaning, the paintings are what you peruse in a mindless sub-conscience.  This time, it has been a melodramatic, spiritual, and a heartwarming roller coaster between family, friends, and lovers. When I say roller coaster, what I mean is: the up’s are high but the low’s are not a negative, thing per-say, it’s simply a bittersweet feeling. These pieces are necessarily not a representation of the emotions that are visibly expressed but what certain elements of the painting represent. I chose to paint on wood because of several different reasons. One, Wood is a foundation, as hippie of me as it is, its a foundation of life, growth (patiently slow-growing), stability, strength, character, empowering. And two, I thought I was most of these things on my own as a person and in my art but I didn’t know who I was fooling. Reason being, I wanted to embody the idea of wood as a solid and firm foundation, physically and emotionally as a representation.

These last couple weeks it was the people around me that have done a lot to help me be these things. I was swamped with overwhelming changes and unexpected new feelings I didn’t think I were possible to ever have. Like life, I look back at my paintings an realized that that’s how my paintings were made. I started with confidence and yet with hope and ended with an uncertainty but yet had faith in them. I never know how a painting will ever turn out but its how you relate not only the painting itself but the materials used that makes a painting. I’m not sure if you will all understand my sentiments but I will say they are very powerful to me. Whether it is to you or or not, that sense of “feel” within these wood paintings is real.