Why I Paint

“Making your unknown thing is the important thing"

Georgia O’Keeffe

Someone recently asked me WHY I paint the way I do, and I realized that I don’t share that big WHY too often. Painting, for me, is deeply personal. Even though I paint abstracted, representational images, each color, every stroke, tells a story that is both an unraveling of my experiences and a reflection of my emotions. As the mother of a teen and a tween, there are a lot of big emotions in the house, so I often use my paintings as a way of processing my life. The push and pull of abstraction / representation and softness / texture are the “words” in my visual language to tell these tales.

I paint people and animals because I love characters. I like to capture the moods, the time, the vitality and the vulnerability of these beings in unique ways. But there’s more than that. I paint because I love the act of painting - the colors, the texture, the physicality, and the magic of making something that didn’t exist. The way a painting evolves is a fascinating process. Although I typically set out with a certain vision, the painting always has a mind of its own.

I love that others bring their own layers of meaning to my work - it just adds so much to the experience. Thank you for responding and collecting my prints and original paintings!