There is an unleashing when we don’t pretend to know what is supposed to happen. A freedom.
Coming from a model of self-containment and fear, I carried the same into adulthood. And found that it served me in a way. I did not expose myself so therefore couldn’t be judged. Couldn’t be wrong in assessment or action. My emotional resonance was, and still sometimes is, muted to the outside world. Unfortunately, that same containment can feel like cement on the inside. A cast of myself. It can also make me unknowable and unseeable. And that is the real crime.
Painting has opened a door that I didn’t know had been cemented shut. Fluid, emotional, colorful, sometimes screaming sometimes quiet. Other art expressions have pleased me but none has addressed this aspect of willful shrouding. And none has answered every calling, until this. I move when I paint. I channel thoughts and feelings and sometimes stories. I chant. I dance. I am as fluid and interconnected as the strokes I put down. I work large and still find there is not enough space for everything that I have to say. Each painting sessions leaves me spent like a good run and tender like a good cry.
With the smallest strokes I find the cast is broken and brushed away.
