But Darling, Is That You?

This final piece has been a long process, and is kind of a coming of age piece. Across a lot of my work, characters and themes deeply connected to my Self are displayed. As that process has become more public, shared, and paid attention to - my audience has tended to inquire about who the characters are, and why one feeling has been explored or developed more than another. With this piece I wanted to go slowly and extremely intentionally in order to be true to the self portrait I wanted to make. While sometimes I find myself focusing on how to get my art further, reach higher, and make it - the work with the most meaning for me is not generally the most liked by an audience. My favorites are the ones that visually cause as much overstimulation as I receive from the world, the ones I see people like, but move away from quickly.

Frequently the question people ask of the loud pieces, or the painful ones, is along the lines of “is that you?” Normally I say, “maybe, it could be anyone.” But when my uncle passed by my house and saw this work in progress, he asked “is that you?”

I stood for a moment, looking a the canvas which at the time had only the girl on it, floating in a field of empty white.

"Uh, yeah I think it might be - if that’s okay with you” I replied.

Deflecting questions about how my personal life influenced my art was my autopilot for a long time because people shy away from discomfort in most cases. They don’t want to hear the response “not great” to the question “how’s it going?” because we’ve been taught the goal is to be respectful in opposition to compassion. But I’ve come to the conclusion that respect and compassion only get better when they are together.

After experiencing some of the highest highs of worldly travel and the lowest lows of an absolutely bankrupted heart - the way I am became focalized on being an experience of radical compassion with everyone I interact with, because I didn’t witness it enough of it before my journey of a life time. I didn’t come back from those experiences wanting to talk about it, or try to explain the wonder, or socially profit from my experience - I only wanted to use my evolved self as a tool to exude the compassion that washed over me, and hope it would catch on back home.