I don’t think i’m interested in painting or art or drawing or anything like that. I’m not interested in rendering out a perfect figure or a perfect landscape. I’m not interested in producing this perfect finished product which holds so much value. I’m not interested in conveying a certain specific idea or message.

I’m interested in magic. I’m interested in process. I’m interested in what unfolds when I show up everyday to make something with my hands. When I start using a new material. When my head starts to do this thing where I’m thinking so many different thoughts at once and I don’t really understand any of it, but I know it’s something good. My hands shake with something good. My heart thumps with something good. Something exciting. Something I don’t have complete control over, but I still maintain a certain amount of control. Because I’m the one yielding it. I’m the one showing up and making this stuff. It’s rendering magic. It’s the excitement that rushes through my veins when things start working. It’s the tea breaks I take when things aren’t exactly clicking. It's trying something new and feeling at home again because the magic is back.

It’s finding magic in the ordinary. It’s finding intrigue and fascination in something so mundane.

Painting is the closest I’ve gotten to magic. Which is something I crave. I crave the excitement of magic. As a girl who would read books about wizards and movies about aliens from other worlds. Living in dreams and make believe. Gazing at stars and wishing so bad to see the northern lights because colored dancing light in the sky that must be magic.

It's wishing to experience something more. Something extraordinary. And painting is that. The process of making something even if it’s absolute shit is extraordinary. It’s therapeutic. It’s feeling based. It’s a place where I don’t need to think. It’s a place where I could accidentally drop my paintbrush on my painting and be completely okay because I know I'm capable of fixing it, covering it up, adding to it. Or I could always start over if need be. There is no right or wrong.

It’s such a comfortable place to be. And it’s a place I’m able to create for myself. The way I make something isn’t up to anyone but myself. It has always been so important for me to enjoy the process of making something. It’s more important than the actual subject of anything I make which is why my work has led into this place where the main focus is my main focus and my main fascination that brings me to show up so often and continue making. It has always been color and texture and process. Back when I would paint european landscapes and go weak in the knees at impressionist paintings. It's not getting stuck and making a lot at the same time. Painting ten plexi glass slabs in ten minutes. Not necessarily thinking about creating one perfect piece, but instead thinking of it as a constant movement forward towards something bigger.

It’s why I like thinking in installations. The idea of creating spaces where others can experience something more. Something bigger. When suddenly their bodies are involved in viewing this thing. They have to move around they have to look up they have to look down that have to move their feet. I want people to be able to step into the magic. To be surrounded by magic you’re just able to feel and be within and not fully understand, but you could feel it. You could feel something new. You feel something different. It could change your perspective. It could make you see differently than you ordinarily would.

I just wanna keep making stuff that excites me. I think that's what I mean by magic. It's maintaining this excitement. This sense of wonder. Not just in the process of painting, but in everything that surrounds me. The chills I get when I hear a really really good song. The way sunlight spills over fields of grass early in the morning as its just rising. How reflections of colors and light in windows are absolute magic. How reflections shift and change as you yourself move around the reflective object. There's magic everywhere and it's a little overwhelming, but in the most incredible way and it makes my head feel fuzzy and bright, but that also might just be the coffee I just finished. I think that may be my cue to stop writing and get back to being productive.

I should be doing a lot right now but instead I'm here and I'm just going to write for a bit if that's cool i hope that's cool with you. I took these pictures awhile ago probably while I was still at home going to community college most likely in the passenger seat with my sister driving to mcdonalds for mcflurries and fries.

But I'm not there anymore now I'm here and I'm not sure if I have things figured out anymore than I did when I was in that place avoiding deciding on a major and deciding on a school to go to and maybe I do maybe I'm more sure of myself and what I'm doing and the decisions I'm making. Maybe I have a better idea of what I want my life to look like and what kind of person I want to be and what kind of things I want to do and I'm not sure if I'm making any sense of all but I'm just going to keep writing and keep going because that's all you really can do all you can do is just keep going and continue moving forward because if you don't you get left behind time skips ahead without looking back that's a line from a book by Alan Lightman.

It's a little difficult being a human being. It's a little difficult piecing things together and saying yes to life and stepping outside of where you find comfort and challenging yourself and breathing deep and being okay.

All you could really do is keep doing and keep growing and learning and wishing and hoping and putting forth and taking action and being open and proactive and try to be light. try to radiate light. try to feel lightly. but at the same time feel deeply and love unconditionally and hug tightly and smile warmly.

just try to be a beam of light. that's all i really want to do.

Sometimes looking at art that reaches you is more of an energy boost than the strongest cup of coffee or a perfectly juicy peach.

It's something I don't know exactly how to explain. Being inspired by art. It's this feeling that reverberates throughout your entire body and makes your fingers tingle and your legs shake. It's difficult because it's not a feeling that's easily shared. (but then again are any feelings really easily shared...) I could try to talk about layers of colors and thick paint on canvases make me feel bubbly and a little bit crazy in the best possible way. I could try to talk about why watching videos of my favorite bands performing live makes my stomach do constant back flips while goosebumps raise up and down my arms.

I'm not really sure where I'm going with this. I'm just feeling insanely inspired and I wish I could explain it. I wish I could share this feeling with everyone I know.

I think I'm passionate about passion. In improvisation. In watching something unfold. In being able to see the person within their work. In process. In excitement to be doing the thing that you do. In being human. In allowing room for mistakes and half finished sketches or poems or songs. There's something insanely incredible about being able to see the person behind the finished product. It's something that makes the finished product a million times more amazing to see and hear and experience.

I don't know if anything I'm saying is making any sense at all, but I'll expand on these thoughts eventually. By the way these are all photos of paintings I saw at the l'Orangerie when I went to Paris last march. That was a good day for sure.

There were eight paintings that weren't quite there yet sitting in the studio the night before I had to return the key and give up the space.

There's a weird feeling weighted in paintings that I make that I'm not yet happy with.

I've had some of these canvases for years. I've painted over them time and time again, but I never found something in them that I was entirely satisfied with. It's like I know there's potential there. That it's almost somewhere. But it's just not there yet. So I hide them behind finished pieces with plans of possibly maybe painting over them one day. Someday.

But then it was the night before I had to take everything home. I had to pack away these unfinished, somewhat disappointing paintings into my car and carry them around with me. So I laid them all out and sat on the grimy studio floor and decided to try something completely different.

I used my metal rib from that one ceramics class as a palette knife and took out that tube of bright orange paint that I barely touched from the first college painting class I took and it happened.

Something happened and it clicked. They all came together. All eight of them. After a few months of not feeling really happy with anything I was making. It was like after all the pressure of expectations was released, when it was now or not for awhile, I got myself to just paint and to enjoy it. To enjoy the process of watching the colors as they change and blend together and compliment each other. I got to remember what got me to start playing this game to begin with.

I realized midway through painting that the scarf I bought in Paris a few months back that I've worn almost everyday since was making an appearance in my color palette. Colors that I never really thought much about were suddenly colors that made so much sense to me.

I never thought I'd love bright orange until I noticed how much the color sings when it gets to hang around reds and yellows and blues and greens and purples. Which I'm just now realizing is pretty much the entire rainbow.

It was a somewhat odd night where things seemed to be coming full circle and somehow finally fell into place.

A few months back I was washing a brush in the studio and wound up with this beautiful soft lilac sudsy mess in my hands which I didn't want to rinse away. I showed my friend, Lauren, and she handed me a piece of paper and told me to experiment. So I slapped the suds onto the page and we let it sit for a few hours to see what would happen.

Experiments are fun. They're freeing and light and easy.

It's easy to get really stuck in this place of thinking and overthinking and not making anything at all and not doing anything at all because you're so stuck in your head instead of getting your hands coated in beautiful soapy lilac suds. Allowing accidents to happen.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that it's important to exercise. To continue doing and making and playing.

To play. To allow yourself to have fun and discover and find excitement and interest in the things you make.

To be aware. To realize when something is becoming more of a chore. And to know when you have the opportunity to change it if you can.

I just want to make again. I think this is me craving to get my hands dirty again. I haven't made anything for me in more than a month. I've been a little scattered with art and life lately, but that's normal when you're months away from graduating from college. I think this is me trying to figure it out. Trying to piece it all together and hopefully reach some sort of realization.

Maybe it’s the crisp air.

Maybe it’s the fact that I’m finally in my element, able to wear scarves and sweaters upon sweaters. The long drives at night in the rain, dumbfounded by the way the streets transform. Making the kind of work that excites me.

i’m not a writer. but i’m constantly writing in order to feel a little bit sane. 

i write to piece things together. to make sense of the mess of images and feelings and thoughts and emotions that make up my life. i don’t write with the intention of changing someone’s life. i don’t write with the intention of telling a story that other people would be interested in reading.