AFFIRMATIONS

When was the last time you fully embraced yourself and your emotions? From the time we were children we are taught what our basic feelings are: happy, sad, or mad. But what about the in-between? Society teaches us which emotions are okay to feel, which emotions are acceptable to show, and most importantly which ones are not—‘it’s a beautiful thing to be happy, but never let anyone see you struggle or see you sad’. This series 'Affirmations' challenges the mindset that it is not okay to feel; instead, it embraces and nurtures the full range of human emotions and experiences by accepting them through radical self-compassion and abstract painting.

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I am revealing my journey through self-affirmation painting in hopes of changing the societal norm of suppressing the unpleasant and instead embracing the whole person. I hope that by creating these abstract works, the audience is able to find themselves within the paintings. It is my intent that the viewer will be able to resonate with a time in their life or emotion with the colors, lines, shapes, and movements in each painting.

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This is a series of both small 6” x 9” abstract paintings and larger more fully developed 30” x 22”, 40.5” x 26”, and 41” x 29.5” paintings. Each day, I engage in the ritual of painting one small abstract painting as a response to my mood of the day. The larger paintings are inspired by the daily practices, diving further into the emotional response and focus more on the aesthetic refinement of each piece. An emphasis is placed on both color and a sense of motion, in hopes to further captivate the viewer into looking a little bit closer.