"The Past" - Acrylic impasto on canvas.

Y’all I don’t know how to describe what this piece of art just did for my soul. I’m sobbing as I type this with the realization that I have found the thing in life that fully feeds my innermost spirit. Songwriting and crafting music has been my lifelong joy my soulmate my other half. The part of my life that

"The Past" - Acrylic impasto on canvas.

Y’all I don’t know how to describe what this piece of art just did for my soul. I’m sobbing as I type this with the realization that I have found the thing in life that fully feeds my innermost spirit. Songwriting and crafting music has been my lifelong joy my soulmate my other half. The part of my life that always felt like most like home. I remember stepping off stage and feeling as if I’d departed to some far off place on an intense journey of emotions and come back again to center a high like no other of pure release. Music had become my gravity. An outward voice that completed me or somehow made the broken one inside me whole or worthy. I thought I needed it or else I was useless and I thought somehow the world needed to hear what I had to say musically. But they didn’t need to hear me as much as I needed to say what I had been holding in . I had confined myself to lyrical prose simplified so much to trying to write something my listeners would enjoy that I forgot to write the things I needed to say ... The truth is I’ve been hiding underneath music as a security blanket for my entire existence and when chemo took my hands and made them numb I felt I had not only lost my health I had lost my ability to play guitar and sing which was like losing my ability to speak I felt I’d lost my entire identity. Then I started listening to new music that inspired me in my headphones while painting. It began waking up the nerves in my hands . I used canvas and coarse painting textures with gloved bare hands as brushes and pallet knives as drums beating and pounding as hard as I felt necessary to sling the paint as if I was slinging the pain of my loss off of the knife every time. I can’t play drums so my rhythm be it intense is more inspired movement with the use of paint brushes , fingertips, pallet knifes. More enjoying freely and uninhibited painting to the music rather than a performance of being in sync on the timing with it. Not worrying about perfect markings rather becoming engulfed in the movement of applying layers. This piece I found my rhythm...and a deep burning passion. Im not giving up on music but art just made me fall head over heels in love with it all because of this piece. Over 40 layers of application and sanding with variations of washes, Fiber pastes, flexible modeling pastes, acrylic heavy body paint and layers of matte and glossy varnishes sanded on every layer in various sections. It’s the first one ive completed in more of a slap sling bang boom canvas beat down to some upbeat music rather than a peaceful calm painting session in the studio. I don’t dance but this came close to feeling like a dance with this piece. A dance that allowed me to release some inner work that I’ve needed to for a long time. I’m so thankful to have this medium to express my emotions with out even stepping up to a mic. I can share all those feelings that have no words deep enough to express. The ones we keep in the shadows or locked inside. The ones big that feel like love brighter than highlighter orange or the ones that sing of sunsets and better days. I am so thankful to my mom for inspiring me to paint and Alton for inspiring me to try new techniques like sanding the layers of my art.

Thanks to all who have trusted me to create a piece for their home. I am honored and grateful to be doing what I love most. Luv hope