we can be both the muse and the artist
how art allows us to take back the narrative
I only want to be the muse if I know who is telling the story.
For centuries, women were only the muse of the artist. A place to project their own male desires. An object of beauty. Why figurative work? People always ask me.
I needed a place for the perpetual ache. A place to not be terrified of my own voice. To end the narrative it was wrong, that it was silly, that it was dramatic, that it was too sensitive or too harsh, unintelligent or even indulgent.
There are many times in my life where I wish I had spoken up. The consequences of biting your tongue can linger for a lifetime. My work, subconsciously, became a catalyst for my healing. It began to tell the stories that I could not say aloud. It was safer to present an abstraction of my emotion. I wasn’t sure the world could hold it.
The idea of reclaiming a woman’s narrative through art is a powerful one. Am I doing it justice? Am I showing up?
When does my body become mine again? How do I make it less of a cage?
I don’t have all of the answers yet, so I continue to paint. I put brush to canvas. I listen to women. I portray their stories.
Have you ever felt like you don’t really belong anywhere? Where is home? How do we even begin to define it?
As a kid, I wanted to be adopted. i needed a reason for feeling so out of place. we spend our lives floating, hoping something or someone catches our edge, tethers us along the way.
Belonging is a fundamental need. we are social creatures. we are social creatures with tiny computers in our face, 24 hrs a day. we long for quality connection. maybe we’re too scared to look up and ask for it.
I utilize my work to create a sense of interconnectedness. the world has always felt like a place that cannot house all of my big feelings. art made room for them.
Art has no limitations or judgments. the process of creating validates every emotion I cannot make sense of. Sharing the work prevents loneliness from lodging itself in my chest; festering up and reminding me it is better to make nothing at all.
Paradoxes of human experience: the love, the grief, the confusion, the joy. creativity can bridge the gap of our collective loneliness.
It reminds us that you are multitudes of every complex analogy you’ve ever thought of, and that every person walking alongside you to the subway or the coffee shop on your morning commute, is also just the same.
It tethers us. sees our inner loneliness and says, come here, I will hold it for you. it gives us the pause and the courage to grab someone by the hand and say, you are not alone.
