I used to hate abstract art.

I would get furious and uncomfortable around it. I was the person in the room saying things like:

“My child could do that” or “that’s just a blob on canvas” or “it’s not fair, they scribble some crap on paper while I take hours to draw a face”.

I didn’t understand how someone could sell a painting that was just marks and color, to me it looked messy and unpredictable. I didn’t think it was fair that I was spending hours, weeks, months on a piece of artwork that looked “realistic” while someone else was so “easily” painting splotches of color all Willy-nilly.

I didn’t get it.

I know, that sounds terrible, I sound like a jerk. Honestly, I kind of was (at least in my own head).

Then I met my mentor, Lauren Sauder, and she encouraged me to try new things in my work. Explore and experiment! She also gave me a book to read called 9th Street Women, which talks about very important female artists from the 1940’s-50’s who shaped the abstract expressionist movement. I had honestly never heard of any of these artists and was apprehensive about it. The book took me over a year to finish but I am beyond grateful that I read it.

I was sitting in my studio one day in 2023 and I decided it was time to get my butt out there and meet local artists. I did a little research and found an artist talk by Vy Ngo and Ty Nathan Clark, two abstract artists who were doing a show together in Waco, Tx.

I was terrified, I literally sat in my car wondering if I should turn around and go home. I hate abstract art, remember? Instead, I walked into Art Center Waco and I sat there, listening to Vy talk about her work. Afterwards I walked the gallery and admired their work. I noticed the details, the layers, the texture, the color. Each painting made me feel something different, and I couldn’t really explain why. That experience truly opened my eyes.

Since then I have found a new appreciation and massive respect for abstract artists. I realized that I didn’t hate abstract art, I was jealous of abstract artists because they were doing something I was afraid to do. I was a perfectionist, and I didn’t know how to let go. They did. They were so intuitive, and yet detail oriented. These artists put their soul into their work, but they were also planned and meticulous and it took them the same amount of time and energy, if not more, to create a painting as it did for me.

In the last few years I have experimented with color, medium, texture, mark making, and subject matter. I have painted all kinds of things, trying to find what fits me best and what I truly enjoy. Each series has brought new elements into my work, some of which I hold onto and some of which I let go. Recently I have felt compelled to push my work even farther. I wanted to see how abstract I could go. I wanted to test my limits and discover what I was capable of. I wanted to let go of control.

It all started with a large canvas, 40x60 inches. First, I painted my two daughters sitting on a pier in Santa Monica, Ca. However, I didn’t like it. I knew the proportions were off and I felt frustrated that I couldn’t fix it (trust me, I tried), and I grew more and more upset. Unbeknown to me, this was not a failure but an invitation to success. So, I painted over it. I painted a mess of color, blues and reds and browns. Then I painted a huge cross in the middle (this was during Easter so it makes sense). I painted red all around the cross, dripping down. Yeah…I know. It was intense and honestly? Kind of weird.

Anyyyyways, I hated it, so I decided to paint over that cross and intuitively created a house. Not just any house, my childhood home. Kind of. Like, a cartoony version of it. And then the painting sat there.

This process brought a lot out of me. I cried a lot. I didn’t have a plan. I let go of perfection.

It was really difficult, but it was necessary.

Then, I began playing with a different color palette. I paired peachy tones and pink tones, inspired by stones I saw at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History. I added white, large swatches of white, gently applying it with a palette knife. Then I took the end of the palette knife and I started to scribble, I let my body move intuitively and I found the marks that I made so beautiful, so wonderful. Some long, flowy, gentle. Some tight, messy, tangled.

It was a relief to get those marks onto the canvas.

Once the paint dried I added a tiny house with pencil and I wrote “Home” and “house” next to it. This was homage to my childhood house and a sense of home. You can actually still see the ghost of that house peeking through the last layer of paint.

This painting sat like this for a while.

Am I done? I thought to myself.

It didn’t feel finished to me, though. It felt incomplete.

I wanted to paint a figure somewhere on the canvas, and I thought about it for a long time before I finally decided to paint a little sleeping boy. I wanted the boy to be small, delicate. I practice drawing him a few times before I knew it was right.

Once he was added, Alla Prima, to the canvas I let it sit for another month until I finally decided it was finished.

This piece truly pushed me into unknown territory. It taught me a lot about my artistic process, skill, and understanding of art.

I am so proud of this painting, but I am even prouder of myself.

“Home”

40x60inch Oil and Graphite on Canvas