First Week

De-stress, de-escalate,de-compress

Well, the box from IT came for my work computer and phone yesterday. I just have to wipe both of them and stick them in there and FedEx them back and it’s done. I found myself obsessively checking my work phone over the weekend only to catch myself and put it back down on the table. I was noticing how much free-floating anxiety I have about the job that I am not used to not having anymore. Like my mind knows I don’t have my corporate job, but my body sure still thinks I do. It’s going to take a few weeks at minimum to de-escalate and calm my nervous system and settle into this new rhythm that I am creating.

I purposefully did not paint on the weekends and I have painted both days this week. This is a massive break from what I have been doing for the last almost decade and I found myself cycling through a myriad of emotions. The nagging sensation that I was not doing what I was “supposed to” over the weekend and the guilty feeling of “not working” on a weekday. Phew! Too much. I’ve been listening to Medieval madrigals and pre-Baroque church music almost nonstop which I find extremely relaxing. But at least by the end of the day Tuesday it was starting to feel right and proper. Luckily, I am an incredibly habitual person. You get me to do something twice in a row and it’s like I’ve done it all of my life.

I decided to work on my mermaid painting because it’s the most calming of all of my projects I have going on at the moment. I have been wanting to paint this for months now and it feels really good to dive in. It’s a story about a Mama Mermaid and her little Merling. They are cuddled up, wrapped in seaweed, safe from the ocean tides. Sea Otters sleep like this with their pups. The seaweed in the painting takes on a dreamlike quality and transforms into the tendrils of a nebula deep in the galaxy. Something I keep attempting to harness in my work recently is how utterly psychedelic and metal motherhood is. There is an indescribable vastness coupled with time distortion and bright-eyed wonder mixed in with what I can only compare to the shrill drilling intensity of a totally banger of a metal guitar solo. I am circumambulating this sensation as I try and convey hints of it in each of my new works. In two days I managed to get the figures complete. Their tails are inspired by the amazing Leafy Seadragons, which I am obsessed with. You can see the work of my micro-apprentice on either side of the Mermaid’s tail. I get to tackle that seaweed into nebula transformation later today which I am both terrified and stoked about.

Speaking of my micro-apprentice, I joke that I am training him to do all of my backgrounds. We’ve been painting with watercolors for the last several months and he’s been getting better and better with a brush. So I thought, why not, throw caution to the wind, put down a waterproof cover on the ground and see what happens. Well, we painted four panels together, in acrylic. He used the brush the whole time and didn’t even get any paint on his clothes! He’s just about to be a year and a half! I’m a very proud mama. Oh! And these panels are going to be for something incredibly exciting.

I used to make what I called thangkas. They were paintings that I framed with fabric, ribbon and fringe and you could hang them like a thangka on the wall. These four canvas slices we painted today are going to be the first batch of thangkas 2.0. I can’t wait to share progress on these.

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Mark your calendars if you are local. The next show I have curated at The Alembic in Berkeley is called, Angels & Aliens: The Truth is Out There. I’ll do an entire write-up and art share of all of the incredible pieces that will be hanging and available to adopt in the space in the following weeks before the opening. This painting below is by the one and only OG Toni Taylor. If you don’t know her work, get educated. She is sending us three originals and they are fire. This is one of my favorite pieces of hers, The Seer.

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Thank you so very much for reading and your support.