On Becoming.

“Be patient towards all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and loike books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.” ~Maria Rainer Rilke

For so very long now (if you’ve been following along--hello!), I’ve been beside myself because I can’t seem to find my place in this world no matter how hard I try, no matter even, how much I think I’ve surrendered. I’m not fully at home in the classroom, not fully at home in the commercial art world either…but alone in the studio is where I feel true.

I treasure up in my heart, the silent conversations I have with myself through creative mess making. I confront and lean into the questions that plague me—what kind of artist am I, will I ever be able to do this full-time, except for my studio, why is it that I never feel at home anywhere? I listen for the answers. I climb the mountain to see what I can see. Artmaking helps me find out what’s inside of me—how tenacious am I really? Artmaking helps me become.

I am riddled with insecurities and a pervasive feeling of lostness, trying to straddle the responsibilities of real life and the life I live inside my head that makes its way into countless stacks of sketchbooks. In the studio, I give myself space and margins that don't exist in my real life and along the way, I find bits of myself. 

This new series that I’m developing is just that—tiny snippets, parts of me that are coming together to make a whole. Each image tells a story, each number and color and pattern says something about me. Thoughts and wishes caught on paper. Tiny images that seemed insignificant by themselves and headed for the scrap pile now reflect back to me parts of a whole. This is who I am. I am becoming and patchworking myself together one bit at a time. Each part holds something important for me to know, each piece has something to tell me. It's my way of living the questions. 

Original for sale in my Etsy shop soon (if I’m brave)! xo