Blog: The Scaffolding

The Hills Art Alive, Green Fields

What does it mean when I make the statement that art is about exploring and discovering? Right now I have reached a point in my art making where there appears to be a gap that needs to be crossed. I feel it in my soul. I have had these gaps appear after there has been a quiet time in my work, where I become comfortable and repeat myself. But this one feels different.

When I start a painting, I know in the end that I will attach something representational to put somewhere or everywhere in the work. Something that relates to the issues I work with. Issues that relate to change as we travel life’s journeys both happy and sad. But in the beginning when I start, and I place the first color on the paper or canvas, I am stepping into the unknown searching and always, even after great struggle, find the next step to take, the next possibility. The piece I have been working on for the last several weeks changed at least 5 times. When I began it was not going to be a landscape. The end result “Green Pastures” represents my struggle, and change and the steps I took to in the end create something representational. For this piece the representation is the entire composition, not just an icon. This piece started as an abstraction and ended up as a landscape. The title represents the next step I need to take. The next change I need to have happen.

I am searching, I am exploring, I am not finished building that scaffolding across that gap. Each layer of the scaffolding illuminates the next. I continue to take the next build the scaffolding not knowing, but believing, hoping that what I am doing isn’t in for nothing and that I will be able to share it with others. It is the unknowing, like when you begin an abstract painting, that is exciting and yet at the very same time very, very scary. I am alive, it is my journey. Being an artist is all about, the next discovery, the next corner turned, the next possibility to share with others. It is an individual choice an artist makes, does she create that next layer of the scaffolding or not. I am at that point. I am building the next layer but it definitely is very wobbly at the moment.

My work is conceptual abstraction, it explores change that happens during life’s journey. It explores the struggles and the joys this change brings.