Stretch Your Legs
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!