It took a lot of thinking, three years of thinking at least, to come to the conclusion that I am not a landscape painter. Regardless of how romantic plein air painting is, how inspiring and striking the beauty of this world is… it’s not my subject matter, not when it comes to my painting. I love photographing the beauty I find in every nook and cranny of this world, but I don’t want to paint it. It does not light me up, it does not call to me.

I remember when I first felt like I found my purpose as an artist, it felt so intrinsic to my being, so natural. It felt like coming home to myself. It was October of 2017, I was a third year illustration major at UMass Dartmouth and I had landed myself a studio on the top floor of our off campus art building, the iconic Starr Store in New Bedford.

I had been feeling fed up and frustrated with my illustrative work and was so grateful for the opportunity to escape into a world of unadulterated expression. An illustration major having a studio was not completely unheard of though it was uncommon and I refused to squander the opportunity. I was given the chance to pursue a second thesis, and work with a professor who I respected immensely, was so inspired by and felt unbelievably fortunate to be working with. For the first time in the three years that I was doing the work I was meant to be doing.

Within the first two weeks of class I knew what I wanted my thesis to be. It was as though a veil had been lifted. I realized for the first time how much I had to say and how little of it needed to be depicted in a literal visual sense to be understood. Color became my language and my thesis evolved into the process of listening to one song throughout the duration of a piece and painting circles to create what I would call Colorscapes. Immersing myself in the experience of each painting and creating the space for myself to fall into flow, a state of effortless focus and oneness with the process, allowed me to express my feelings through color, opacity and scale in a way that felt cathartic and honest to the core of my being.

`BFA Exhibition at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth CVPA Campus Gallery`

`April 7th, 2018.`

After completing my work and exhibiting it alongside the graduating BFA Painting majors at the annual student exhibition on campus I sold three of my paintings, graduated with a BFA in illustration and two minor degrees in painting and art history, moved back home to Connecicut and worked part time while pursuing my artistic endeavors. I sold some work, participated in a few group shows, did live painting at a couple festivals, and in 2020 signed a contract with a self publishing author to illustrate a mindfulness centric children’s book.

Creating the children’s book, titled We Are Enough, was an incredible experience, though challenging. We Are Enough made me proud of what I had learned while earning my degree in illustration. Ater struggling to feel confident as an illustrator throughout my undergraduate career it was extremely surreal to see how many people resonated with the illustrations and recognized how much love was poured into each page. The process of creating the book from conception to completion took two years and required me to think about depicting complex ideas in a visual language that was the complete opposite of how I had been so focused on thinking for such a long time prior. That experience ended up altering how I thought about my career as an artist as a whole, and impacted greatly what kind of work I thought I should be doing.

By the time We Are Enough was published I had finished a three month road trip and moved to Colorado. Needless to say, driving cross country alone, living out of your car and witnessing some of the most beautiful and awe inspiring things in the world changes a person. I could write a book about what that trip meant, and means, to me but I’ll leave it at that for now. What I will say is that my road trip without a doubt changed how I viewed myself as an artist, maybe even more so how I saw my future as an artist.

I started to think I needed to show that I could do everything in order to earn the right to lean into abstraction. I have an illustration degree after all, and anyone can throw paint on a canvas, or draw a circle. Right? It was suddenly extremely important that I ditch the circles and forget about abstraction. No more colorscapes, landscapes all day, baby. So that’s what I did. I dedicated myself to figuring out how I wanted to capture landscapes. How to lay down my brush strokes, how much detail to include, asking myself questions like “how true should I be to the photograph I’m working from?”, should I impose “unrealistic” colors to capture a feeling, or learn to lean into realism and let the intrinsic surreal quality of nature do the talking…

Well, fast forward three years and it turns out I don’t want to be a landscape painter! I admire landscape artists and landscape paintings so much, I will always enjoy consuming them as a viewer; but I miss the flow and fluidity of my abstract work. I miss the depths at which I would explore the meaning behind every brush stroke and color choice. I lost a bit of that along the way, and I fear it’s been replaced with a feeling of malaise. Trying to recreate the visceral beauty of something is honestly exhausting and I’ve realized now fruitless it feels. The feeling I get when watching the sun rise on a brisk morning in the foothills of the Sangre de Cristo is something I don’t know how to depict representationally on paper, and I’ve come to realize that I don’t want to.

Lately… I’ve been yearning for my circles. Okay not necessarily circles, but I’m craving the state of flow I was in when I was creating that work. I miss exploring the meaning behind every little brush stroke and color choice the way I did when I was painting intuitively and abstractly. I want to play with different styles of mark making the way I can only seem to do when making abstract works. I want to simplify my expression to something less representational and more suggestive again, so I’m leaning into that feeling and I’m leaving landscapes behind.

I’m not sure what will come next or where it will lead me. Maybe it will lead me back to landscapes, or back to my sexy little flowers who can't keep their tongues in their mouths. Either way I’m excited, it feels good to lean into my intuition and leave behind an idea that is not serving me.

Leaving Landscapes

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Leaving Landscapes

Conception

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