How to begin, think think think.
If you don’t know me, I am a mixed media artist from Pittsburgh. Welcome, you. Who are you? How on earth did you get here? No matter. You’re reading this now, and so I suppose we’re a little closer to being friends than we were a minute ago. The artist statement on my website gives the fancy, more conceptual version of what my art is about. Please read it, if you care to - it’s written in lovely turns of phrase that I spent days editing. But here, if you couldn’t tell, my tone is “conversational”, and I’m trying to just write things like I think them.
So, as an introduction: I’m into forests, fantasy, old secret things, and the idea that the world looks very different in your head. And I make mixed media paintings, which are like regular paintings, but with a bunch of other stuff in them.
If you do know me (and now that we’re on the second paragraph and we’re all friends let’s just say that counts everybody), you will know that putting my thoughts and feelings out into the world is not something I have generally been comfortable with. I put a lot of my soul into my artwork, and just showing that to people feels raw enough sometimes. Let alone actually putting the emotions and inspirations behind it into words. And let even aloner (?) just airing out my thoughts on art in general, or on life, or on, I don’t know, pancakes or something.
So why, you didn’t ask, am I writing this? I’m not completely sure but hopefully as we go along we’ll find out. Maybe it’s to give some context to me and my art practice, which is a smart and businessy thing to do. Maybe it’s to work on focusing my thoughts coherently (someone, probably not my therapist, may have said that understanding what I’m trying to say can be like trying to catch water in your hand). Maybe it’s to start conversations. Maybe it’s for me, maybe it’s for you. Either way:
I’m going to be making a post every two weeks in 2021, a year which we will all soon refer to as The Best Year Yet. I’ll be posting info on shows, sales, and updates on new works. I’ll be highlighting some older work and telling the stories behind it. I’ll be talking a little bit about some of the technical and conceptual considerations of art-making. And I’ll be doing it all in this effortless, conversational tone that you already picked up on because I pointed it out earlier.
And all that is to say: this is a thing I’m doing, and it felt odd to just start it without some kind of prologue. And it ISN’T some kind of New Years resolution thing, because I’m posting this in December. So.
I feel so vulnerable already. Thank god no one’s reading this. Well, you are. Okay, it’s just you. You’re fine.