August 2023 News: A Message From the Artist

XIII: Death / Rebirth, 2023.

All things happen in their season, and while I don't regret all that I achieved this year that wasn't painting-related, I am very relieved to have finally sat down and gotten this piece done. We all need to do self-portraits every so often and I couldn't have picked a better archetype to have inflated my sense of self-importance.

The next piece I'm working on is larger, with more mixed media, and requires a lot more processing power as I sort out multiple light sources and nail down the hierarchy of focal areas. The concept is Surrealist and abstract, chaotic but frozen still. I'm trying to channel de Chirico and hope that I can do justice to the images that I've got in my head. Oh, and I'm flying out for New York in fifteen days, so hopefully I can do them justice in a fortnight or otherwise I'll have to ship the canvas to my new studio to finish it up there. Not that having some work in progress will be such a bad thing, with blank walls to fill and upcoming crit sessions in the pipeline.

Current work in progress; oil pastel, graphite, and acrylic on canvas.

My suitcases are packed with home essentials like clothes for all seasons, a rice cooker, and a month's supply of instant coffee to tide me over while I get settled in on the Lower East Side and find the best spots to pick up groceries. Sesame is leaving for Florida in three days; she'll be staying with one of my day-one besties while I'm away studying, going back to her roots as a (sub)tropical cat.

I've had the opportunity to meet several SVA professors online, and have gotten some tantalizing bits of information about my very international cohort. Am feeling very excited about the move, and can't wait to get started and see what I can uncover about myself as an artist through two years of diligent focus!

She knows. She knows, and she hates plane trips.