Process
UNDERSTANDING PROCESS HEIGHTENS THE EMOTIONAL RESONANCE OF THE WORK
Artists can find inspiration in many areas, but for me, it has always been about process. However, for years it wasn’t apparent to me what was hooking me into the work. I misunderstood the role that process plays in my psyche, my imagination, and especially in my emotional connection to the work.
The first time I consciously noticed how process was affecting me was almost 5 years ago when I began, rather organically and unplanned, to use collage in my work: It was 2020 and in addition to the losses that came with the arrival of Covid, I also had a number of personal losses. My brother-in-law suddenly died and followed shortly by my uncle (and creative mentor) in 2019, just as I was entering my delayed grief over the stroke that my daughter had years before. Frankly, I didn’t know how or where to begin. It felt immense, like a wave that could not stop and that would take me under with no escape.
Unexpectedly, I was drawn to adding collage to my work—taking bits of paper, tearing them apart and then gluing them to the substrate. I found that the more I layered these semi-transparent pieces of paper, the less jagged, individual, and separate they became. My initial work with this medium was quite emotional, full of metaphor and, ultimately, incredibly healing. It was this process that taught me that life comes to us in pieces and it’s up to us to figure out how to work with them, appreciate them, and knit them together into some sort of cohesive whole. On some level, this is always what art is teaching me through process.
Since this realization about the effect of process on my personal healing and integration, I have begun noticing that when I focus on process instead of the end result in my work, I get to the end result naturally and with better outcomes.
The process itself is like a breadcrumb trail that guides me through a sometimes complex path and presents problems for me to solve that ultimately reveal where to go next. When I only focus on the end result, I hit roadblock after roadblock and never find my way through what seems to be a maze of wrong turns and dead ends.
However, when I am solely focused on the process and enjoying the ‘becoming’ of the piece, I find that focusing on process is like a road map that gets revealed to me with each step I take.
Watch:
The Making of
The Enchanting Wilds
I hope this video gives you a little insight into the emotional/mental process that comes before the painting and creating process. This is the part that makes being an artist so exciting and substantial to me. I hope you enjoy it and that it gives the work just a little more context for meaning.
I begin intuitively, usually without much of a plan, using dark inks to lay in a basic structure. Throughout the process, I lay down collage papers and try to make random marks that will only partially show through in the end.
I’m interested in the space between representation and abstraction, always searching for the pivotal balancing point between the two.
