Quiet Assurance

I believe our creative output reflects our internal landscape.

If you have followed my journey for some time now, you know that the past five years have been - how shall I say it? Eventful.

While I never sought to be an artist, being creative has always been foundational to me. From my educational and professional experience in interior design, architecture, and construction to my accidental arrival into art, my work over the past few years has spanned the spectrum of creativity.

Landing on a consistent visual language in my art has been challenging for me. While I very much appreciate those who reach out to me to share that they “know my work when they see it,” it has been hard for me to know my style. I have not always worked with a specific color palette, canvas size, or style of painting. My work over the past few years has been an evolution reflecting the growth I was undergoing.

If you view my Instagram account and scroll down to the very beginning and then scroll back up chronologically, you will see the shifts and moves that have shaped me and, as a result, my art over the years. My architectural background taught me to experiment and test, to create iteratively, and not to allow any one idea to become too precious. In a recent blog post, “Distance Invites Clarity”, I cite my time away from the studio as a good thing because the distance did precipitate clarity.

Any major life change can shake a person up and cause them to momentarily lose their footing. And because life does indeed go on, if we are creators, we create from the space we are in. In reviewing and reflecting on my work recently, I can see the “tiredness” or “stress” in some works, and at the same time, I can see “calm” and “joy” in others. I do believe that we have to move through those murky, less confident phases of our lives to arrive at the next. Just as a photograph captures a moment in time, our work captures not only the subject matter itself but, on a deeper level, the things we are working through, moving through - forever with our eyes focused on the horizon.

The moments from the paintings above were never meant to be anything. They were created in the Spring of 2023, and I was using them as warm-up exercises. I had just moved into my new home the year before and probably had been away from the studio for a while due to unpacking, getting settled, and resting. To begin practicing again, I probably grabbed pieces of paper here and there and began painting. The beautiful thing about practicing is that there are no expectations. There is no right or wrong. There is an openness and a freedom in how you approach and execute your thoughts.

In this relaxed state, I believe the visual language that I didn’t think I had came to the foreground. The very soft and watery colors and quiet, whispery washes blended into one another seamlessly. The greens, oranges, blues, and grays were quiet and confident on the textured paper. Could this be the language? The funny thing is that this type of painting is indicative of watercolor painting in general. To me, this is the beautiful part of the practice. But when your mind is still processing life and all of the changes, that type of minimal clarity is not always obvious.

This language quietly emerged again when I began practicing this year - warming up, yet again. I started with existing paintings (“Shadows of Echos”) that were created a few years ago. The watery blues, tans, and golds were always an interesting color palette, but I never felt the paintings worked on their own compositionally. I was interested to see if they could work as notecards - and they did. Leaning into this, I created another original painting with colors of pink, peach, white, charcoal, and gold; then I strategically composed and cut a set of notecards from the larger painting (“Chiffon”).

Well, I guess two things happened: I stumbled upon the fun of making beautifully original notecards, but more importantly, I confirmed that composing with whispers of color is powerful.

While this language has always been a part of my watercolor practice, I had never focused on it solely - I always felt other things needed to be added to it. Perhaps the additions were right in that season of life. But now, in the season I am standing in, the quiet and confident washes are enough on their own.