Me and my family travelled in a caravan around Australia for a couple of years and while we were travelling i felt this urge to paint again. I set up a makeshift studio with a camp table outside of the caravan and i started to paint the places we were experiencing as we travelled. This soon fell through as the wind would pick up my artworks and haul them across campsites, leaving me annoyed and running barefooted after them.
When we finally stopped travelling and found a house i had my very own studio and it felt so surreal to have a place where i could create without having to pack up every night just in case the possums ate my paint lol.
so i started to paint but i felt lost. I was a bit lost in myself actually and it showed in my art. I would switch to one style and then onto the next. i would watch other successful artists online sell out of artworks quickly and do incredible things with their art, all the while i felt like i had been left behind.
It irritated me way more than it brought life to me and there were many times where i thought i would close the door to my studio and never paint again. The pressure for success started to get to me and i was just anxious about everything i.e all the joy was lacking.
I am a firm believer that art really does reflect whats going on in an artists heart. That’s why it can be so personal and vulnerable- like everyone is viewing your heart. So when my art was all over the place, really it was saying that i was too.
Then one day the strangest thing happened. I started to get connected with a church community that represents freedom and love ( sounds very hippy i know) and i started to experience God in a way i never had before. Essentially it felt like i came alive and started living and i was totally blindsided. Blindsided because i did not think that this kind of church existed at all. I am not interested in religion and ” going to church” i am interested in a life transforming relationship with a God that is personal. And that is what i have been experiencing.
I was working on a collection before all this and it was very ” on trend” and i was feeling very cool and edgy. I thought i was the next big thing ya know? well, i got plugged into this community and all of a sudden i started to feel the need to paint more freely and so my abstract art came back to me. The flowers appeared in my works as well and i started to feel like THIS IS SO ME.
Just like i am not interested in religion, i am not interested in creating art that is on trend because essentially, it lacks soul and depth. So that’s why my style flipped and changed essentially overnight, because in a way- i did too. If i ever meet you in person i would love to share this heart to heart because the internet is hard to explain such wonderful life altering things and i have much to share about it all.
So here’s to a new season. A new blooming and essentially the start of a new collection.