My days are oriented towards what’s next. The next meeting, next meal, next weekend, next, next next. Recently, I was gifted a copy of my senior major exhibit catalog, and instead of looking at what’s next, I was looking at my work, and at myself as an artist, from 10 years ago.
I’m getting ready to start a new a series of paintings, and this moment to look back was unexpected but timely. Unexpected maybe is an understatement. It was a miracle! Fated!
As you all know, I’ve been taking a portrait painting class. A few weeks ago, I realized one of my classmates also went to Dartmouth when I saw a Hood Museum of Art sticker on her water bottle. Talking about the art department and shared professors has been nostalgic in itself, but earlier this week, Leah told me she had found my year’s catalog in a pile of stuff she had kept from college. A small, but mighty miracle, no?!
This was the painting and statement I shared in the catalog:
Maps are tools to navigate new places and cities, but they also stand alone as their own place: a transformed place. The geometries and shapes of maps blend together to create an entirely new world for us to decipher, to reframe and challenge the familiar. Painting is like creating a map, bringing together lines, forms, and colors to create transformed environments: my own personal map. My paintings are largely process based, reacting and responding to each layer of paint. Just as maps guide me through the side streets and hidden roads of new cities, my paintings act as my guide from one layer to the next. They lead me to the next color, line, mark. What was once a painting of bold turquoise and fluorescent yellow lines can turn into a painting of muted forms masked by translucent purples with a wipe of my oil and paint soaked rag. In time, light shines through the surface and creates a sense of luminosity that has been eluding me until this final layer. My painting is no longer my map that takes me to the next color and mark, but instead stands alone as a new place: a transformed place.
I was pleasantly surprised by what I wrote in college. I was prepared to be embarrassed for my younger self, but it’s a very true reflection of how I approached my paintings then and how I approach my paintings now. In planning my new work, I’ve been thinking about places, memory, and how memory transforms places. Turns out, places, maps and transformation have always been a part of my artistic fixations, but I had forgotten. Maybe people really don’t change.
The nostalgia of looking back at old work has been comforting. I’m also very proud. Sure, there are things that I would change about my old paintings, but they leave behind a map of my artist self at the time. I’m comforted knowing that I made work I’m proud of many times before and will make work I’m proud of many times again. Look, I even painted figures in college that weren’t horrible. There’s still hope for me as a portrait artist!
What I’ve been reading
Children of Blood and Bone: I had a horrible cold that took me out last week and this series was the silver lining. It was the only thing that could keep me awake during the daytime hours. There’s nothing more humbling than a cold and my body absolutely refusing to let me do anything for over a week without feeling like trash.
There Is No Point in My Being Other Than Honest with You: On Toni Morrison’s Rejection Letters: I didn’t know Toni Morrison was an editor before she was a full-time novelist. Her rejection letters are thoughtful and generous while being direct; something I aspire to! While the letter themselves were inspiring to read, this quote from a keynote address about movement building stuck with me, “We don’t need any more writers as solitary heroes. We need a heroic writers movement—assertive, militant, pugnacious.” In college, I mostly worked in isolation, and as I start to paint again, I don’t want to be a solitary artist. There’s an artists movement on my horizon.
The Foreign Language that Changed My Teenage Son’s Life: Paul Tough writes about accompanying his son on his deep dives into different subjects, from birding to learning Russian. It’s a really beautiful story about a father and son living life alongside each other. It’s worth a read. In his final reflection he writes, “A big part of becoming a teenager is figuring out how to fit in. Sometimes that means papering over the stranger parts of your personality, suppressing your uncommon enthusiasms, but sometimes, if you’re lucky, you find a place where you are accepted despite your idiosyncrasies…The next time he took a deep dive into a new realm, I might not be going with him. But I had a feeling he would not be traveling alone.” Is this not what all of life is; figuring out how to fit in to this world? I am grateful for all of you because I certainly don’t feel alone.
What I’ve been making
Korean chicken soup: My mom and my aunt swear that Korean food and kimchi cure colds, and I, along with every other Korean person, am in agreement. I ate this soup for a week. What are your Foods that Cure Colds? I’d like to add some variety to my sick diet for the next time.
loved this post! <3