works-in-progress.

so i've been busy in the studio, my dears. and i must say that things are changing for me-- i think that the drawing class i took last fall allowed me to embrace some of my inherent traits i'd been squelching over the last few years: first, my need to have color take center stage and second, my...sloppiness...willingness to let lines be fluid and dynamic rather than perfectly placed.
before i took that class, i thought i couldn't do realistic work. i thought i couldn't draw or render for stink. by drawing hundreds of drawings and spending hours looking at the world around me and translating that into a drawing, i overcame that doubt. however, i was unsure of what to do with this new information about myself. what was i? a portrait painter (i love it)? a landscaper? surrealist (let me show you the "love brigade" drawings sometime)? these must be struggles that all artists go through.
i have been working and working to find my voice as a painter, artist, human. oftentimes, my work has been influenced by what i thought people wanted or i thought would be successful on etsy or other places i've offered my work up for sale. this is silly! it's for this reason that i took a little hiatus from adding new work to my etsy shop or even completing pieces over the last few months.
so to continue on this path, i'm doing more art-journaling and experimentation outside of my comfort zone. i'm reading work by great artists and their processes. right now, i'm obsessed with Kandinsky and his book Concerning the Spiritual in Art. in its introduction, Kandinsky writes, "Every work of art is the child of its age and, in many cases, the mother of our emotions. It follows that each period of culture produces an art of its own which can never be repeated. Efforts to revive the art-principles of the past will at best produce an art that is still-born."
this inspires me to create from a place completely separate from my own earthly (and perhaps a bit ego-driven) desire to "make it" as an artist. i've decided (or perhaps just realized in this part of my life as well) that i don't want to make anything that is still-born, to borrow from Kandinsky. i want the work i make to have the same impact on people as a yoga class-- to transcend the material and touch the eternal. i don't know how or whether this will ever come through me, but here are a few works-in-progress to illustrate how all of this gobbledy-goop is translating into paint.

as always, you {dear readers} are my inspiration.

the love you share with the world is that i hope to convey in my paintings.

with gratitude & all love, k.