my paintings
a virtual art show? sharing something different!
i recently hit 400 subscribers (🫶🎉) what does one say to an audience of 400? omg. thank you💗. I write from the heart, so the support means everything to me. & the same to my followers as well, there’s 888 of you today!
i wanted to dedicate a post to the milestone, but i’ve had a bit of writer’s block. while my creative brain is buffering, i thought maybe you all might like to see and read about some of my paintings, which show another side of me! i started painting in 2020 and it has become a huge part of my life.
i’ve already paired some of my paintings with poems on here. rather than double-posting, i’ll link the poems ☺️ all are acrylic on canvas. since i’ve never sold or shown my paintings, i suck at keeping track of their specs… i like big canvases though, so most of these are 18x24 or larger.
the above painting is titled “empathy”. it is a split scene on one canvas. the images came to me in a dream—though, they turned out differently when i painted them. i have extremely vivid dreams… always have. i always felt lucky, until i learned it’s a decent indicator of poor sleep quality. but i gotta get inspiration from somewhere, so it’s a trade off i won’t complain about.
this one also came to me in a dream, and it was one of my first paintings. i woke up and i was like… yeah i need to paint that.
this piece (avoidance & acceptance) was an experiment that took an unexpected turn. i started by placing many large blobs of white paint all over the canvas, and then added just four small blobs of black paint randomly.
the white represented how i wanted/intended for my life to pan out, and all that was within my control. the black represented major traumas and things that were out of my control. the goal of the experiment was to cover the canvas fully with paint without cleaning my brush, while simultaneously trying not to allow the black to bleed into the white too much.
i began painting in the bottom right corner and continued clockwise. as soon as i reached the first black blob, i saw how dramatic the impact was. i panicked and tried to control the spread of the black paint, but everything was turning grey.
by the time i had reached the second blob (lower left quadrant), i started to cry. i felt “set up for failure” by the first blob, and i wasn’t expecting pain from 20 years prior to resurface mid-stroke, but it did. i didn’t even try to control the spread of the black around the second blob. frustrated, i thought “fuck it” and intentionally spread it all around.
when i reached the upper left quadrant i looked at what i had so far and realized, even though it wasn’t going the way i’d planned, i still liked how it looked. from there, i focused less on avoiding the black paint, and more on making something i could be proud of.
finishing this piece allowed me to see the beauty i’d created—not despite darkness—but because of it (both on my canvas and in my life). the painting process perfectly mimicked the cycles of pain and recovery that i’d gone through in my life. it was a much more powerful experiment than i’d anticipated. i can see all my mistakes, embarrassments, and sorrows in this piece. but on the canvas, i actually like them. on the canvas, i think they’re beautiful. that’s how art heals.
and your art can reveal shit about you like that, if you allow it to. like, sometimes i hate what I made. sometimes i wanna go all claude monet and just smash a painting… but i sit with the hatred instead. i ask myself, why do i hate it? art is meant to elicit emotion, so if i hate it, it’s doing a great job… and so it must be great art. at some point i realized art is just a key that unlocks the door to something else. art doesn't make me feel anything, it brings existing feelings to the surface. i’m extra grateful for the paintings i hate… they are like a map to the parts of me that need love.
the painting (which i’ve paired with the above poem “situationship”) is titled “no face, no case”. it’s definitely about sexual autonomy after trauma, and liberating yourself from shame. the reference model for this one was an anonymous friend of mine, who sent me a nude for the cause.
The Thank You Note I Took Six Months to Write
(A painting I titled in a rush on it’s way out the door to its new home, and for some reason decided to call Thutmose III… acrylic on canvas, and I think this was a 24x36)
this painting was inspired by a beautiful sunrise i saw while visiting hawaii. it was probably the best sunrise i’ll ever see in my life, but definitely the best one so far. this is the second of the only two originals that i’ve sold.
this one (denial release) is about waking up to an uncomfortable reality, after spending an extended period of time in denial and daydreaming yourself into believing in a different outcome. the release of denial sparks a pivotal (and often excruciating) part of any recovery process. bittersweet progress; just as florence welch sang, “i’m ready to suffer and i’m ready to hope...”
there are more than a few songs that come to mind, which beautifully capture this collapse. i listened to two on repeat while painting this: “glitter” by tyler, the creator and “c’est la vie” by tinashe. if you listen to them, you’ll notice a dramatic change in tone and tempo in the second half of the song.
anndddd i wrote a whole post about this one 🖤☝️
if you’ve made it this far, thank you for attending my first virtual art show!
now, back to scampering around outside until inspiration for a new poem hits me.
thank you for reading 🖤
- em
you can purchase a copy of my poetry & art collection, harmless frogs & poison darts, here:
or buy me a coffee 💛 your support is greatly appreciated..
i’ve started releasing more paid content!
paid subscribers can read more about my creative process, explore some of my unpublished drafts and alternate versions connected to my poems, and gain access to my erotica, journal entries, and other behind-the-scenes writing.
Great show.
Stunning, the paintings and your words. <3