30x40 on canvas. Acrylic/ Glitter/ Silver Leaf/ Art Resin. Ready to hang.
It took me almost 40 years to understand that it is my responsibility to enter a room and put out a frequency. In the past, it was always distorted as I thought that I was to absorb whatever came my way. I thought if I reacted right, I would be successful. Which made me a great manager, and an even better waitress. Modern-day hospitality is just performing emotions in reaction to how they get to you first. The intensity of that conditioning has yet to move through me but sometimes there are these spastic, almost ethereal moments of pushing through my perceptions so that I can get to the part where I am living my dreams. The ones that were mine, not suggested.
What’s the line - over and over life was just the things that were happening to me? The things I created, of course but when on the victim side none of that is seen. I have always had that nagging fear of maybe I had talked too much? Or asked too much? Or felt too much? That and it’s opposite of how every single thing about me was probably not good enough. Not smart enough or pretty enough or whatever else constitutes the elusive perception of “enough.”
Maybe there are too many colors and it is way too busy and bright but to me what this canvas is a portrait of is a voice. My voice. . A voice that learned how to direct an entire room, scared to death on a podium until it wasn’t scary and for what? I haven’t decided.
I have my big dreams in my tiny house. On the coast where my eyes are pretty small but they work enough to see the ocean without really ever understanding the truth of its vast depth. I only think I can see what’s in front of me when there are so many more layers than just that.
Just like this art. Loud and intricate and it isn’t sorry.
I love the people who make the big ideas seem even bigger and more abundant - small and intricate shapes using light and color and silver and sparkle to cast a bigger picture. Makes me want to fly to Richmond Park and drink elderflower soda with the calico cats until the sun sets, just betting on the muse like that’s why we were born. Maybe I should move to London after all.
All I ever wanted was to be able to let go of all that love and all that pain without it hurting so much. When I finally had the courage I figured out that it was the holding on that hurt, not the letting go. When I finally had the courage I learned that it was trying to
Bend myself into a far nicer person than I actually am in order to feel like I’m enough. Like if I act right I’ll be safe. Which never ends well. I have done this so many times in my life and I think I’ve learned my lesson just one more time.
This painting is a portrait of the voice that with every word memorized learned how far the light will go to illuminate all of the colors of the life that we get to carry.
