24x30 Acrylic/ canvas/ glitter/ epoxy art resin. Ready to hang.
It’s taken 12 years. I finally have the confidence to put blank white spaces into my art.
In my twenties, I wanted to live in the heart of downtown Chicago. I worked in a packed restaurant and after my shift went to the packed bar at midnight, then to the packed nightclub where the speakers shook the walls and I danced until the sun came up. I didn’t have the confidence or identification for blank spaces in even a second of my life. I thought if I filled every single minute with every single thing then I would be interesting, and smart, and most of all I would be too busy to feel any type of way about any type of thing. Silence felt terrifying but I lied to myself and just said it was boring.
All I want these days is blank space and gaps in time to intentionally rest and do nothing. I’ve been calling this summer of 2023 my great summer of hibernation. I’m either in a hot room, in the ocean, or at home and writing or painting. There is no event or gathering that sounds appealing enough for me to have to put socks and shoes on, drive on a highway, look for parking, and be around people. I do not apologize nor do I ask for permission from anyone to be like this. I have the confidence to miss out. I need to miss out.
This painting is a celebration of finally growing into the self-awareness of my often compulsive need to blindly consume products and experiences in order to not feel or identify myself. All I care about these days is taking actual care of myself and being rested enough to have the ability to put out what I am creating at its greatest potential. I need wide open spaces and big blocks of time alone with just my noise-canceling headphones and “no words write” playlist to do that.
Every year Kevin and I go to SLO COunty on the Central Coast and pick out our ranch in the hills of Morro Bay. We hike the San Simeon peninsula and visit the hundreds of elephant seals. This year will be no different. Eventually, we are going to buy a house with a chunk of land in those misty, rolling hills, build a hot room and a few small living spaces and run the space as a non for profit. This painting to me looks like the open hills and misty beach sky of those dreams. If there is one thing that life keeps teaching me over and over it is that anything I decide to do I make happen. I am so grateful that I have lived long enough to understand that I need the blank open spaces to cultivate a beautiful life based on what I put out into the world, not what I consume.
This is a portrait of the slow countryside, not just in our dreams for the future but the magic of the stillness in my mind when I am taking care of my mental health, my family, and my body. I hope you can feel that peace and acceptance in this portrait.
What are your dreams?
How do you see them?
