Take a Breath: A Creation Story

Ever since March of 2020, I have been consumed by thoughts about breathing. I have questioned whether I should allow for deep breaths in the grocery line, feared not being able to catch my breath, pondered if it was safe to breathe, questioned whether to cough in public or hold it in, and I needed to find a means of expressing these emotional and physical responses in my paintings. Since my art explores how nature causes emotional responses, trees immediately came to mind as a way into navigating the things that were taking over my head and heart. In x-rays our lungs look like tree branches. Trees are the lungs of our world. And during this time, I have found solace with one tree in my backyard, a touchstone of rootedness in my daily hectic routine. So I began the long layering painting process and the series finally emerged around September. It was in these first days of September, I came to see the vision I had explored in my head. I continued crafting this vision through the rest of the year.

You see I am what one might call an emerging artist….but I use this term differently than it usually is applied within the art world. Normally the term emerging refers to how many years in art practice an artist has engaged with their art. I use emerging in the idea of process. For me, I have ideas in my head, often furiously jotting down thoughts, words, etc. on paper and then I take to the canvas and start to explore. I usually explore for awhile until something starts to emerge from the canvas that I am drawn to. This can be weeks or months. Once this happens, I immerse myself in getting more focused, careful, and precise in where the painting is headed. Often times my original thoughts and scribblings become just a fragment of thought associated to the canvas. Almost as if the canvas and I are in a group project throwing ideas out to each other until I am ready to say “Ok. Let’s go with this. This is something.”

With this series, twenty three paintings emerged in total. Some took on a darker, moodier tone of distorted tree landscapes. Others were infused with the physical manifestation of taking breaths influenced by details of tree bark. The paintings helped me to navigate breathing during a pandemic. A time where the the act of breathing, one that never really crossed my mind in daily life, became an all encompassing awareness of it.