2026
50 x 64 cm
acrylic on paper
In the series of paintings titled The storm above. The storm within., I attempted to create a visual language for recovered childhood memories, and the process of recovering and reprocessing them. The paintings contain multiple layers, each depicting different aspects of memory, and the layering, melding and compounding of memories. These are represented in layers of very bright colors and shapes, contrasted with very dark ones, each representing how traumatic moments can blend good and bad in the mind of a child, and result in confusion and ambiguity around what is and is not right. The paintings try to show how these memories resided in my brain and in my body, not understood and not conscious for decades.
Journal paintings
"I think of my job as a healing person is to set the stage for my body, my mind, my soul, my psyche... to do it's own healing. To basically clear the path. To treat the healing path as like a seed in the garden. And my job is not to make that seed grow faster, but instead, to give it all the things it requires to grow well."
Daniel Mackler
My whole life before the journal paintings everything I made had a concept, was often researched, and was well overthought. So. Much. Fucking. Thinking. The series, The storm above. The storm within., is one of the projects that has emerged out of what I call journal paintings. For the last four years, I've been doing paintings where I try not to think, have absolutely no intentionality, just move exactly how I want to move with my body and with the brush, use whatever colors are present with me in the moment and paint whatever I want. When I first started the journal paintings, all I knew was that it was important that I let myself paint without pressure of a concept, goal, forethought or even direction.
I think of these paintings as the lowest of low stakes art making. Anything is right, everything is fabulous and it doesn't matter anyway. I love painting without intention. It allows timid and painful things to emerge.
This vibe somehow unleashes a fucking bonanza of work. Never before have I produced so much. I look out a window and realize hours have passed and I have no idea what just happened other than it was a fucking blast.
I had no idea where this would all lead, but I did know something had to come out. Inevitably what is with me in the moment, what's happening with me right then, what is impacting me both good and bad, or just what I'm observing in Berlin is what comes out. While the paintings have no initial intentionality, I do eventually, usually months later, start to realize what has been coming up and what they're actually about. So it's in retrospect that they get grouped together around a set of feelings that bound them.
Movement has always played a big role in my work even though the output itself is never movement. Movement for me is embodied in how the work is made. The work is made with the force of my entire being, moving all around the work, moving it into to different places in the studio, and adding layer upon layer over weeks or months.
Doing whatever it is I want has been huge for my practice. It has led to projects I would never have expected were within me. It has shed light on parts of myself I didn't know were there.