Lately I've been feeling like how I felt when I was a teenager, lit with passion and excitement for life, deciding who I would make myself into. I was ignited but the fire never really got a chance to burn because so much happened so fast. My dad died the month before I started college in 2014, and my mom died 18 months after him. I couldn't come up for air, and it took me losing my entire mind in 2020 to begin to understand what took my flame away. Since losing my mind and mostly getting it back, I've learned a lot of lessons and made many realizations. The first realization being that I didn't want to be in the place I was stuck in—suspended in grief, sorrow, and pity—anymore. I realized to get unstuck, I had to go back to my past and figure out what was sticking to me. So I acknowledged what was behind me, and how and why it had such a hold on me. I had to understand how it shaped me to be released from its mold. I had to accept and have compassion for the version of myself I was so frustrated with for being stuck in the first place. Acceptance and compassion granted, I was released.

Now I get to form a self in place of the one that shattered. One shaped to my liking, not the world’s.

Freer, I went back to the feeling I had as a teenager. beginning again to make myself into myself, i decided to be devoted to myself and my art practice. In my vow to grow and be a better artist, i have decided to make and publish—over the next few weeks—a body of work as evidence of my devotion.

And now (like in my psyche), I am the subject.
I am doing a study on myself:
various works in various mediums,
building foundational art skills I either lost or neglected to gain/maintain
because I was just trying to survive.

color light composition shape proportion

shading blending blocking sketching
writing reading painting feeling
practicing
learning