'Tis the Season: Coming November 3rd
A COLLECTION OF SMALL ABSTRACT PAINTINGS TELLING THE STORY OF LIVES LIVED ACROSS MANY SEASONS
‘Tis the Season
A Collection of small abstract paintings telling the story of lives lived across many seasons
This is a collection of small abstract works telling the story of many lives lived across many seasons.
I was having a conversation with friends recently about favorite holidays. I shared that my favorite holidays were New Years and Birthdays because both are signify markers in time.
I love celebrating birthdays (no matter whose birthday) and New Years because they both acknowledge the passage of time. New Years and Birthdays both feel like occasions where we are in transition: fully conscious of all that has passed, hopefully looking toward the future, and in a moment between those two places we are fully aware of the preciousness of the present.
I always use my birthday and New Years as opportunities to reflect - reflecting on how I have grown, reflecting on parts of myself that need more loving attention, and acknowledging the life that has been lived up until this point fully aware that it may be wildly different in the course of a year.
“'Tis the Season” is a celebration of all the lives that have been lived in a lifetime and a reminder to savor the fleeting present as the changing future fast approaches.
If you want to stay up to date on the progress of this collection and be part of the private viewing when it happens, you can join the Collectors Club here!
'Tis the Season: 2023 Holiday Collection
A COLLECTION OF SMALL ABSTRACT PAINTINGS TELLING THE STORY OF LIVES LIVED ACROSS MANY SEASONS
‘Tis the Season
A Collection of small abstract paintings telling the story of lives lived across many seasons
This November I am sharing a collection of small-scale abstract paintings - something I don't do very often!
Y'all know my love for big paintings, I've shared before how I love the physicality that comes with painting something bigger than me, so it isn't often that I paint on a surface so small.
But art is nothing if not a mirror reflecting back to us ourselves, and in this current season of life our family is going through a lot of changes.
2023 started out with our daughter getting a pretty severe medical diagnosis that we've been monitoring all year (don't worry, she's doing great and has responded to treatment beautifully), we're in the middle of renovating our basement, and now our family is expanding! We are welcoming our second daughter to the Parks Pack in March of 2024.
All of this, of course, in addition to our regular obligations my husband and I share with jobs, community organizing, parenting, and so on.
With so many things taking up space in my life, the amount of space my art has been able to occupy has been much smaller. These paintings are a reflection of the stolen moments - the desperate need to capture the fleeting feelings found in the quiet minutes just before the next wave of change washes in.
‘Tis the Season for change, the transition from one season to the next, a time of preparation. I see it in the way the light shining through the trees on the dirt trail grows softer and the coolness of night comes earlier and earlier, ushering me indoors like a momma ringing the dinner bell to let the family know it’s time for supper.
’Tis the Season to find the warmth at the heart of the home and settle into pockets of stillness where they can be found.
If you want to stay up to date on the progress of this collection and be part of the private viewing when it happens, you can join the Collectors Club here!
Your Anger Doesn't Make You Hard to Love
A new collection of large-scale paintings inspired by my 2020 poem and painting, “My Rage is Like a Flower Garden”.
What Has Been Brought From the Garden?
"What Has Been Brought From the Garden" is my latest collection of artwork. This collection of paintings is inspired by my painting and poem, "My Rage is Like a Flower Garden", that I wrote in the heat of the locked-down summer of 2020.
The focus of this collection was to explore the theme of feminine rage, creating work that was floral and feminine in color palette, but rage-filled in expression and intensity. This collection consists of large, attention-grabbing paintings that cannot be ignored because of their size.
In reflecting on my 2020 painting and poem, I wondered, "if my rage is like a flower garden, what have I harvested from it?" The paintings and accompanying writings are the answer to that question.
For so many years, I believed that my anger made me hard to love, so I hid her in the darkest corners of my psyche with hopes that no one would ever see her or hear from her, until I started painting.
My abstract work became my outlet for expressing my anger, the setting where I could sit with her, listen to her, and learn to be in relationship with her. I quickly learned that my anger was rarely alone and usually accompanied by the other neglected parts of myself, like my sadness, shame, guilt, and fear.
I started to understand the role of my anger - like the big sister I had always wanted for myself growing up - standing up for and protecting the tender parts of myself I had also been neglecting.
At first she’d come out in floods of tears and fury that would often leave me feeling like an exposed nerve, but the more I sat with her, the more peaceful she became, the more mature she became. We would always meet at the canvas where we would speak in the language of color and form and chart histories through marks and lines and the resulting composition was our coming together.
And after some time growing together, creating together, she has learned to speak with more tact, and I have learned the ways of loving her.
If you want to stay up to date on the progress of this collection and be part of the private viewing when it happens, you can join the Collectors Club here!
An Ode to Anger
A new collection of large-scale paintings inspired by my 2020 poem and painting, “My Rage is Like a Flower Garden”.
What Has Been Brought From the Garden?
"What Has Been Brought From the Garden" is my latest collection of artwork. This collection of paintings is inspired by my painting and poem, "My Rage is Like a Flower Garden", that I wrote in the heat of the locked-down summer of 2020.
The focus of this collection was to explore the theme of feminine rage, creating work that was floral and feminine in color palette, but rage-filled in expression and intensity. This collection consists of large, attention-grabbing paintings that cannot be ignored because of their size.
In reflecting on my 2020 painting and poem, I wondered, "if my rage is like a flower garden, what have I harvested from it?"
For so many years, I believed that my anger made me hard to love, so I hid her in the darkest corners of my psyche with hopes that no one would ever see her or hear from her, until I started painting.
My abstract work became my outlet for expressing my anger, the setting where I could sit with her, listen to her, and learn to be in relationship with her. I quickly learned that my anger was rarely alone and usually accompanied by the other neglected parts of myself, like my sadness, shame, guilt, and fear.
I started to understand the role of my anger - like the big sister I had always wanted for myself growing up - standing up for and protecting the tender parts of myself I had also been neglecting.
At first she’d come out in floods of tears and fury that would often leave me feeling like an exposed nerve, but the more I sat with her, the more peaceful she became, the more mature she became. We would always meet at the canvas where we would speak in the language of color and form and chart histories through marks and lines and the resulting composition was our coming together.
And after some time growing together, creating together, she has learned to speak with more tact, and I have learned the ways of loving her.
This collection is a love letter to my rage, an ode to my anger, and a thank you for her bringing me this far.
If you want to stay up to date on the progress of this collection and be part of the private viewing when it happens, you can join the Collectors Club here!
Courage Comes From the Garden
A new collection of large-scale paintings inspired by my 2020 poem and painting, “My Rage is Like a Flower Garden”.
What Has Been Brought From the Garden?
"What Has Been Brought From the Garden" is my latest collection of artwork. This collection of paintings is inspired by my painting and poem, "My Rage is Like a Flower Garden", that I wrote in the heat of the locked-down summer of 2020.
In reflecting on my 2020 painting and poem, I wondered, "if my rage is like a flower garden, what have I harvested from it?"
This body of work is a reflection on the ways in which I have matured into my rage since creating “My Rage is Like a Flower Garden” and a way for me to integrate all of the lessons I have learned since then.
For so many years, I believed that my anger made me hard to love, so I hid her in the darkest corners of my psyche with hopes that no one would ever see her or hear from her, but then I started painting.
My abstract work became my outlet for expressing my anger, the setting where I could sit with her, listen to her, and learn to be in relationship with her.
And what I have come to understand from that relationship is that anger most often points us to the more tender parts of ourselves that still need the light of our attention, and to face those parts requires courage.
So when I ask the question, “If my rage is like a flower garden, what have I harvested from it?" the answer to that question is the courage to face and embrace the parts of myself that need the most love.
If you want to stay up to date on the progress of this collection and be part of the private viewing when it happens, you can join the Collectors Club here!
A Crown of Snakes
A new collection of large-scale paintings inspired by my 2020 poem and painting, “My Rage is Like a Flower Garden”.
What Has Been Brought From the Garden?
"What Has Been Brought From the Garden" is my latest collection of artwork. This collection of paintings is inspired by my painting and poem, "My Rage is Like a Flower Garden", that I wrote in the heat of the locked-down summer of 2020.
The focus of this collection was to explore the theme of feminine rage, creating work that was floral and feminine in color palette, but rage-filled in expression and intensity. This collection consists of large, attention-grabbing paintings that cannot be ignored because of their size.
In reflecting on my 2020 painting and poem, I wondered, "if my rage is like a flower garden, what have I harvested from it?" The paintings and accompanying writings are the answer to that question.
My painting and writing serve as an outlet for me to process my experience as a woman, mother, and trauma survivor. Part of that processing involves examining the narratives that I have both inherited and developed along the way.
I spend a considerable amount time reflecting on the role of women in the mythologies we have inherited and how in those mythologies, the suffering of humankind always seems to fall on the shoulders of women: Lilith refusing to lay under Adam, desiring to be equal to him and her resulting banishment, Eve choosing to eat the forbidden fruit and, too, being banished, Pandora opening the box and unleashing misery and evil on the world, Medusa being assaulted by Poseidon in the temple of Athena and being cursed by Athena (because how could she punish Poseidon?) to live as a gorgon turning men to stone, etc.
These are the mythologies that are at the bedrock of centuries old cultural systems - and those are just a few - but these stories lead to beliefs, beliefs about women and the danger of their desire, the threat of their curiosity, and the trouble they bring when left to their own devices.
As I mature into my rage, I find myself more and more identifying with and relating to the rage of these women - especially Medusa. Artist Mark Bradford’s 2016 piece, “Medusa”, and an excerpt from his poem, “Hephaestus”, are two pieces of work that have stuck with me for years, perfectly capturing this feeling for me:
“There stood Medusa
Mad as hell
I looked her dead in the eye
And knew her.
She hid me inside her crown
I was quiet, I was safe
Watching
Watching her turn men to stone”
-Mark Bradford
If you want to stay up to date on the progress of this collection and be part of the private viewing when it happens, you can join the Collectors Club here!
Stretch Your Legs
A new collection of large-scale paintings inspired by my 2020 poem and painting, “My Rage is Like a Flower Garden”.
What Has Been Brought From the Garden?
"What Has Been Brought From the Garden" is my latest collection of artwork. This collection of paintings is inspired by my painting and poem, "My Rage is Like a Flower Garden", that I wrote in the heat of the locked-down summer of 2020.
The focus of this collection was to explore the theme of feminine rage, creating work that was floral and feminine in color palette, but rage-filled in expression and intensity. This collection consists of large, attention-grabbing paintings that cannot be ignored because of their size.
In reflecting on my 2020 painting and poem, I wondered, "if my rage is like a flower garden, what have I harvested from it?" The paintings and accompanying writings are the answer to that question.
As a survivor who processes my trauma through painting, my artwork serves as a historical catalog charting the progression of my healing journey. Each painting serves as a marker of a moment in time on that journey, like a timestamp, reflecting back to me the subconscious wounding that still needs my attention, and the ways in which I have grown.
At that time in 2020, I was just coming into an awareness of the degree to which I had suppressed my emotions in shame and how little understanding I had about emotional regulation. My 2020 poem and painting, “My Rage is Like a Flower Garden”, was the first time I had found a place to direct the decades of repressed rage I struggled to contain.
So much of the work of healing from trauma is unlearning the habits born from shame that became essential to my survival, and many of those habits involved censoring and editing myself to be the most palatable to others. What I have come to understand in the last three years is how necessary it is for trauma survivors to have a space where they can safely allow themselves to be at their most vulnerable, most angry, most unhinged, most liberated, and most uncensored, and what I know for myself is that abstract painting is that place for me. With each passing year, I strive to find a new level of freedom in my expression, and with each new body of artwork I find my paintings asking me to be braver and bolder than I have ever been before.
If you want to stay up to date on the progress of this collection and be part of the private viewing when it happens, you can join the Collectors Club here!
I Refuse To Swallow
A new collection of large-scale paintings inspired by my 2020 poem and painting, “My Rage is Like a Flower Garden”.
What Has Been Brought From the Garden?
"What Has Been Brought From the Garden" is my latest collection of artwork. This collection of paintings is inspired by my painting and poem, "My Rage is Like a Flower Garden", that I wrote in the heat of the locked-down summer of 2020.
The focus of this collection was to explore the theme of feminine rage, creating work that was floral and feminine in color palette, but rage-filled in expression and intensity. This collection consists of large, attention-grabbing paintings that cannot be ignored because of their size.
In reflecting on my 2020 painting and poem, I wondered, "if my rage is like a flower garden, what have I harvested from it?" The paintings and accompanying writings are the answer to that question.
“What are the tyrannies you swallow day by day and attempt to make your own, until you will sicken and die of them, still in silence?” - Audra Lorde
I used to love watching scary movies as a kid, but now, as an adult, reality is terrifying enough. Each day another mass shooting, each day more children being murdered, horror after horror bleeding over and into the next, so many that I have to ask, “Which one was that again?” while walking into work on a Tuesday morning. By Thursday I am fighting against becoming desensitized to the stories, but I wonder how many more stories like this it will take before I break and that’s why I can’t be trusted with a gun. It’s Friday and I pull into the grocery store parking lot and see multiple police cars and my body fills with fear like gas in a can only to realize that someone has had a stroke, so I go in and buy the eggs. Last Wednesday I was sent to the waiting room at the dentist to wait for my appointment and survey the room for the easiest place to hide before choosing my seat. Every day I walk my daughter into her school I silently worry about the windows that are in every classroom.
And though I am tired by the time I go to bed, I can’t go to sleep because I am just so fucking angry.
If you want to stay up to date on the progress of this collection and be part of the private viewing when it happens, you can join the Collectors Club here!
Where Do You Hide Your Anger?
A new collection of large-scale paintings inspired by my 2020 poem and painting, “My Rage is Like a Flower Garden”.
What Has Been Brought From the Garden?
"What Has Been Brought From the Garden" is my latest collection of artwork. This collection of paintings is inspired by my painting and poem, "My Rage is Like a Flower Garden", that I wrote in the heat of the locked-down summer of 2020.
The focus of this collection was to explore the theme of feminine rage, creating work that was floral and feminine in color palette, but rage-filled in expression and intensity. This collection consists of large, attention-grabbing paintings that cannot be ignored because of their size.
In reflecting on my 2020 painting and poem, I wondered, "if my rage is like a flower garden, what have I harvested from it?" The paintings and accompanying writings are the answer to that question.
Several years of my life were spent concealing and denying my anger, and I gained nothing. A lot of this was because, as a woman in the south, I was taught to be polite, to be a “yes girl”, to be what Gillian Flynn describes as a “cool girl” in her book Gone Girl.
The day that I painted “My Rage is Like a Flower Garden” I learned to be in relationship to my anger. I listened to the rhythms of my anger, I studied its substance, and I found the information and energy it contained.
In the time since, I have worked to know the strengths and limitations of my anger and how it is presented.
And now I use painting to express my anger and that is where I have found growth.
Where Do You Hide Your Anger?
Where do you hide your anger?
Do you take the heart of her fury
And in a boiling bath
Bottle it, can it, and seal it
Inside of a glass ball jar?
Do you place her heart
High up on a too cluttered shelf,
Under a thick layer of dust,
With the promise that one day
Her purpose will come?
What do you say to your anger?
Do you fill her ears with venom when
With a slip of her unpracticed tongue,
She cuts the unintended
And gets splashed with their blood?
Do you sew her mouth shut,
And shame her for coming undone,
Sending her to her room alone
To do laundry
And think about what she’s done?
What if you loved your anger?
What if you gave her a place to play
To run, to scream, to jump, to rage,
And, when she was ready,
Walked her home for the night?
What if you loved your anger?
Fed her, bathed her, clothed her, rocked her,
And at bedtime spoke to her in
Whispers as sweet as milk and honey?
What if you loved your anger,
Holding her hand in the dark
Tracing the veins in her wrists
To the source of her heart?
If you want to stay up to date on the progress of this collection and be part of the private viewing when it happens, you can join the Collectors Club here!
What Has Been Brought From the Garden?
A new collection of large-scale paintings inspired by my 2020 poem and painting, “My Rage is Like a Flower Garden”.
What Has Been Brought From the Garden?
"What Has Been Brought From the Garden" is my latest collection of artwork. This collection of paintings is inspired by my painting and poem, "My Rage is Like a Flower Garden", that I wrote in the heat of the locked-down summer of 2020.
My abstract work is my outlet for processing my experience as a woman, mother, and trauma survivor and all the emotions and narratives that get wrapped up in that experience.
The focus of this collection was to explore the theme of feminine rage, creating work that was floral and feminine in color palette, but rage-filled in expression and intensity. This collection consists of large, attention-grabbing paintings that cannot be ignored because of their size.
In reflecting on my 2020 painting and poem, I wondered, "if my rage is like a flower garden, what have I harvested from it?" The paintings and accompanying writings are the answer to that question.
In a lot of ways, I think gardening is an appropriate metaphor for the healing process. I think we often view healing as a destination, like after so many years of therapy you will arrive at “healed”, or you will be awarded a certificate declaring the work as “completed”, but healing is much more like a garden. Healing, like a garden, requires regular weeding, pruning, and maintenance, and sometimes the soil needs additional nutrients in order for the plants to thrive, but the main thing that both healing and gardening require is attention.
What Has Been Brought From the Garden?
Wise or not, I walk to my garden barefoot
The earth, though warm, is cool on my feet
Compared to the thickness of southern summer heat.
The garden, neglected, is wild, surviving,
I step on a spikey weed.
Thick, overgrown, dogged, resistant,
Overripe vegetables now rotten,
Patterned, combative, protective, unrelenting,
Untamed, untended,
A tangled mess.
What can be brought from this garden?
Wise or not, I garden without gloves,
Pulling the weeds with my hands and
The plants bite back.
Fibers of stems stabbing through my skin,
A familiar pain creeping in while I
Untangle knots of vines.
There is a core of rot in the garden.
Digging, purging, ripping, tearing,
Crying, chopping, cutting, remembering,
exhuming, scraping, digging, hoeing,
There is a violence to birthing that many don't see.
There is so much rot in the garden.
Wise or not, I lay in the dirt,
Mixing tears and sweat into mud,
Painting my face with pigment of the earth,
I’ve lived through many wars.
Amending, nurturing, restoring, repairing,
Regretting, forgiving, wishing for forgetting,
But knowing that learning comes from remembering,
What has been wrought from the garden?
If you want to stay up to date on the progress of this collection and be part of the private viewing when it happens, you can join the Collectors Club here!
Lilith's Garden
A new collection of large-scale paintings inspired by my 2020 poem and painting, “My Rage is Like a Flower Garden”.
2023
“What Has Been Brought From the Garden?”
Collection
"What Has Been Brought From the Garden" is my latest collection of artwork. This collection of paintings is inspired by my painting and poem, "My Rage is Like a Flower Garden", that I wrote in the heat of the locked-down summer of 2020.
The focus of this collection was to explore the theme of feminine rage, creating work that was floral and feminine in color palette, but rage-filled in expression and intensity. This collection consists of large, attention-grabbing paintings that cannot be ignored because of their size.
In reflecting on my 2020 painting and poem, I wondered, "if my rage is like a flower garden, what have I harvested from it?" The paintings and accompanying writings are the answer to that question.
Growing up, it always seemed like there were different rules for men and women around anger and how to express it.
The rules that applied to my brothers didn’t apply for me. If they were angry, they had permission to handle their emotions with their fists (which is problematic for other reasons). If I was angry, I was sent to my room.
The messaging I received as a child seemed to be that anger was a scary emotion. Anger in men was explosive, violent, and scary, but excusable, and anger in me, a woman, was intolerable and would result in me being abandoned. As a young adult, this translated to me exiling my anger to the farthest depths of my self, denying its existence, and defaulting into people-pleasing habits to avoid abandonment.
This experience reminds me of the story of Lilith, Adam’s first wife. Lilith was said to have been created from dirt, like Adam, as an equal, and because she believed them to be equals, she refused to lay beneath him during sex and would not obey him. Adam, however, disagreed with Lilith’s beliefs, and so Lilith fled from the Garden to have her independence. Adam told God that Lilith fled the Garden and angels were sent to find her and punish her.
I think of feminine rage as the archetype of Lilith - cast out and exiled from society for speaking too loudly, for asking too much, for wanting.
But if I had to choose between the Garden of Eden and a garden with Lilith, I’d choose Lilith’s Garden.
If you want to stay up to date on the progress of this collection and be part of the private viewing when it happens, you can join the Collectors Club here!
"What Has Been Brought From the Garden?" Coming May 19th!
A new collection of large-scale paintings inspired by my 2020 poem and painting, “My Rage is Like a Flower Garden”.
What Has Been Brought From the Garden?
"What Has Been Brought From the Garden" is my latest collection of artwork. This collection of paintings is inspired by my painting and poem, "My Rage is Like a Flower Garden", that I wrote in the heat of the locked-down summer of 2020.
The focus of this collection was to explore the theme of feminine rage, creating work that was floral and feminine in color palette, but rage-filled in expression and intensity. This collection consists of large, attention-grabbing paintings that cannot be ignored because of their size.
In reflecting on my 2020 painting and poem, I wondered, "if my rage is like a flower garden, what have I harvested from it?" The paintings and accompanying writings are the answer to that question.
“My Rage is Like a Flower Garden”, 36”x36”, acrylic, oil pastel, and graphite on gallery wrapped canvas
“My Rage is Like a Flower Garden”
My rage is like a flower garden
That is generous in its blooms.
It is hot and sticky like blood and summer-
But in the south where it tends to linger.
My rage is like a flower garden
Tangled with knots of vines-
The start of one and the end of another-
Just webs of stories woven together.
My rage is like a flower garden
Full of thorns like teeth,
That bite, and tear, and leave their marks,
Protecting the roots that are buried deep.
My rage is like a flower garden
Smoking with steam from a heavy rain.
So much so, it makes it hard to swallow,
So I carry it in my mouth-
Boiling,
Shaking,
And spilling it as I go.
Several years of my life were spent concealing and denying my anger, and I gained nothing. A lot of this was because, as a woman in the south, I was taught to be polite, to be a “yes girl”, to be what Gillian Flynn describes as a “cool girl” in her book Gone Girl.
But I learned something the day that I painted “My Rage is Like a Flower Garden”. I listened to the rhythms of my anger, I studied its substance, and I found the information and energy it contained.
In the time since, I have worked to know the strengths and limitations of my anger and how it is presented.
And now I use painting to express my anger and that is where I have found growth.
If you want to stay up to date on the progress of this collection and be part of the private viewing when it happens, you can join the Collectors Club here!