My paintings traveled with me through many seasons of life—this is the story of setting them free
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| Zepher, oil on canvas, 60 x 48 x 2 in, (1994) |
The Weight of Memory
I’ve moved more than many times since creating my oil paintings back in my mid-twenties after acting in the movie Double Impact. Many of my precious paintings are oversized canvases 152 x 122 x 5 cm (5 x 4 ft).
Despite careful handling, one time a canvas was punctured, and the wound felt as though it had been inflicted on me. I was surprised by the assault on that self, inside, who felt the sharpness of that accident and ached for the unmarred version that had existed a moment before.
I’ve been transporting them around with me on most of my many moves because they were the outer representation of who I am inside—that painter who couldn’t paint but longed to.
My lifestyle didn’t permit the time necessary to continue working with this medium. So, my creations remained dear to my heart, almost like they were slices of me. I didn’t want to lose them until I could paint again.
Life and health kept changing. These days, I don’t think I could immerse myself in an environment permeated by the smell I loved, oil paints, flaxseed oil, paint additives, thinners, and sealers due to my sensitivities to these substances.
Oil needs time to dry and cure filling the space with these odors. My creativity had taken a turn from organic flow into more architectural thinking yet staying true to the abstraction that motivates me. I wanted to see what came next.
To say goodbye to a part of yourself, part of your history, there needs to be a shift in perspective so that one isn’t stuck in that reliving of the past as an active connection. The past will remain part of oneself, but it needs to be the past not the present or the future.
They say keep your eye on the prize, the goal, the...what’s yet to come. I had a revelation due to literally trying to keep my eyes connected while creating work. I had shifted from oil on canvas to the digital world of text and images.
A Shift in Vision
I have one eye that isn’t as strong as the other and have been lost in years of conflicting eyeglass prescriptions. The strain has been painful and disorienting. Every time I relocated, many well-intentioned optometrists prescribed technically correct yet holistically misguided prescriptions for me. In reality we see with our brains, not our eyes, and our nervous systems play a critical role in accurate and comfortable vision.
Because I’m a good patient, I’d just pick up my new glasses and wear them. I had no idea how different each prescription was and how they were undermining my nervous system, too. After many years, I met a few new people who led the way out of the tug-of-war waging around and in my eyes.
Even so, working on the computer still causes intense eye strain. Many of my projects had to be put on hold during this time. The result of that has been my use of voice transcription to write so screen time can be reduced. A pleasant side effect has been seeing and accepting my more authentic voice in my writing, even if it’s far from perfect.
In my twenties and thirties, my painting life explored and evolved through experimentation much like my poetry life over the recent decade. Everything is about questioning to me. That’s what motivates me.
I’m interested in a varied journey. It channels into my lifelong curiosity of wanting to understand more about what it means to be human. Some people seem to have figured it out, while I’d been flailing around.
Now, at the age of sixty, I realize we've all flailed around. That struggle shapes a viewpoint, and we have it figured out with some things. That struggle is the art of living. So what if we don’t have it all nailed down, much like perfectionism, which isn’t even possible.
Thanks to these difficulties with my imperfect vision, I’ve arrived at the point of letting go of many things and creating space. Somehow, not seeing clearly has helped me feel more clearly and increased my desire for a spatial balance that embraces the absence of my old history that keeps me stuck. I’m more interested in space than stuff.
Ma, Sculpting the Space Between
In Japan, the empty space between things is called ma. This gap is just as important as the things interrupting it and gives a deeper meaning to the entirety of the whole. I’ve always felt this.
Sculpting the gaps instead of filling them is my next “lead,” my signpost pointing the way to how I will explore with a different kind of intention than the past’s sculpting of paint. About the sculpting of words…I don’t know. I wonder what comes next. Will I finish my many text and video-based projects?
For me, having more room, not just physically in my home but also in my heart and mind, is an exciting idea. This is the essence of what it is to be human, ma inside and out, rather like the physical intercellular matrix that fills the spaces between cells within our bodies.
I’m grabbing hold of this decluttering opportunity to open the door to an expanse for continued exploring and experimenting with what it is to be a living being, which is basically my whole deal. My goal was never one experience.
Learning to Love Unpredictability
I lost the appreciation for surprises early. As a teen, I believed that life would be more predictable and safer if I became an expert at something. I cringed at the idea of being a jack of all trades. As an expert, I could feel more confident with each step and stage of life.
I love that I have become what “teen me” thought of as inadequate. Learning and doing new things regularly fuels the creative process and fleshes out intentions.
Unpredictable mistakes teach if someone is open to pausing and sitting in that destabilized space. I can do a lot of things. By fully immersing myself into learning and doing, the value gained is the perspective, and I have many. That is something to be grateful for.
Sharing My Writing
The act of constructing this communication for you deepens my understanding and clarifies this moment of change I’m going through. I wouldn’t have refined this new perspective without trying to connect here. Lingering in this reflection allowed more pieces of my personal puzzle to click into place.
I don’t often share my writing publicly, but when I do, the interactions that result help me move forward. They mean something to me. Thank you. The reason why I’m posting today is to share with you the difficulties I’ve had around completing projects when I couldn’t see without heavy eye strain. You’ve probably had something throw you off track, too. Did it create a surprising opportunity or revelation?
To me, the surprising realization is that thanks to my eye strain issues, I am able to free myself of my past painterly identity without regret—who could’ve seen that coming? I guess not having a crystal ball revealing life’s secrets isn’t such a bad thing. This butterfly feeling in my gut is pretty nice, and the lightness of it is also pretty great.
Starting Fresh: The New Experiment
What I do know for sure, to begin fresh, all we need is the metaphorical lab coat and the intention to be engaged with this evolving experiment called life. Discoveries are the point. Doing the work, questioning our beliefs and needs from a changed perspective, can get us there.
We become more than we were because of having experienced challenges, intentionally and by chance, providing more substance so we can better connect with others and our environment.
When each day is spent and finished, the idea of searching for a greater meaning to life seems misguided. Finding meaning seems less about grand quests for power and fame, and more about how we actually lived, and what we chose to focus on.
We can spend our time exploring, learning, surviving, and contributing to our communities. That feels substantial to me. How we sculpt each day creates the meaning of our lives.
I’m really excited about what comes next because I have absolutely no idea.
About Me
As an abstract and figurative painter, I explored human transformation, emotional space, and the invisible architecture between movement and stillness, visibility and absence. My layered approach included Abstract Expressionism, Minimalist Abstraction, and Contemporary Narrative. My work conveyed identity, transformation, and embodied experience—the emotional and physical in-between of abstraction and realism.
