Encompassing
I’ve always created my art with myself as the primary audience. It’s deeply personal. The processes of creating the natural inks, dying and stitching the thread, choosing a color palette based on emotions or a song, experimenting with and moving the ink on paper or canvas, and scribbling marks across the paper are meditative and all internal reactions. You can learn more about this by reading about My Process.
When I started sharing my art I wanted to leave my work up to interpretation to anyone who was looking at it. I love that each piece can mean something different to each person. That’s something I’ve always found beautiful about abstract art. A number of people have asked me what the work means to me. At first I didn’t want to share too much. I didn’t want to alter their perception of the pieces and I also didn’t want to share the incredibly vulnerable stories behind the work. I’ve decided to crack open the door and start sharing the narrative behind some of the pieces I’ve created.
This is the story of Encompassing
Encompassing is a 4-part, mixed media series I created in 2024 that includes 12 pieces.
To get the most out of this series, I suggest that you pair your viewing of the art with the music it was created to. At the end of 2023 and early 2024, I was listening to Songs of Silence by Vince Clarke regularly. Vince Clarke is an icon. He was in great bands like Depeche Mode, Yazoo, and Erasure. It’s worth diving into his solo and collaborative catalogs to experience his songwriting and skill on the synthesizer.
I drafted 12 paintings to four songs from Songs of Silence. It was the most therapeutic artistic experience I’ve had to date. I took the miniature paintings I drafted and turned them into 8”x8” mixed media pieces using my handmade natural inks. I built the color palette based on a narrative. Three inks are carried through the entire series: Rose of Sharon (symbolizing perseverance), Ninebark (symbolizing hope), and Indiana Sand Cherry (symbolizing resilience). Each piece was created over hours and days, listening to a single song from the album on loop. It was created in the order shared below.
To encompass is to enclose, to surround, to envelop, to hold within.
Encompassing is a narrative of my personal journey navigating divorce. It’s the processing of deep emotions that I faced and continue to grapple with. A person encompassed, emotions encompassed, and the journey of finding myself. It’s a journey that started in nature (Cathedral) with hope, resilience, perseverance, and protection (peach pit). Cathedral takes me into the places I love, among the trees, mountains and rivers. I look at this group of paintings and they bring me peace. They bring me happiness. Nature is where I find joy, but it’s also where I started to find clarity. Clarity that led to an internal storm (White Rabbit).
White Rabbit is the beginning of a grueling process of pain and confusion, but also hope for what comes after the storm. Vince Clarke’s song “White Rabbit” has a tension and release that I looped over and over as I planned, as I painted, as I scribbled, as I worked, as I drove my car. As the storm began to sort out, the real journey began (Passage).
Passage incorporates orange cosmo flowers. Orange cosmos can symbolize joy, vitality, and excitement but they are also used as a symbol of forgiveness. Forgiveness to myself. Forgiveness for others. Their bold color combines with the deep grays of the Indiana Sand Cherry ink. Forgiveness and resilience take the lead here. The gold scribble indicating chaos, but enlightenment. Passage includes a broken rectangle with two divergent orbs moving through and outside of the shape’s stability and order. As the stability breaks we see the division (Mitosis).
Dig back into your middle school biology and earth science classes and you might recall that mitosis is a process of cell division. Simply stated, mitosis is where two distinct cells are created. It fosters repair. It replaces damage. Mitosis brings in avocado ink, symbolizing personal growth. The spirals are the journey, the division. Divergence continues and settles into growth and resilience.
I still meditate to Songs of Silence, whether it’s the full album or individual songs that have held specific meaning for me. The music gives me chills, makes me cry, and alters my consciousness. This series has been, and continues to be, a process of finding myself as an independent, distinct cell in this universe.