2023: The year that answered

“You can’t really know where you’re going until you know where you have been.”
— Maya Angelou

new year, new possibilities

I recently saw a tweet that said, “January me wouldn’t believe the life I’ve lived this year.” After a year dedicated to healing and focusing my attention, I registered for Kristen Ley’s mentoring session to develop and curate a pattern collection in January 2023. Working as a sole creator for many years, it felt imperative to invest in my creative career to narrow my focus and utilize the accountability that came with the mentorship. Kristen is one of the most brilliant creatives I know and has a gift for problem-solving and solutions. It was also important as a friend that Kristen would have an understanding of my work over the past few years and be straightforward. I was ready to advance, utilize new methods, and strategies. The healing work helped me see how long I had operated from a wounded source. 

Groundwork

Painting is a changing process that is rooted in trial and error. I am maximizing the right brain when I am in a flow state. The left brain is necessary for correction during the process. Still, letting it become a critic instead of the editor is so easy. The critic will start feeding self-doubt that sabotages the joy that inspired the beginning. The editor knows to walk away to come back with fresh eyes, adjust colors, and let you know when a painting has come to completion. We have to be careful about the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves. A narrative is powerful with the ability to be soul-crushing or life-giving. 

When I shifted my focus to building a new body of work, it felt like something that needed care and protection. Creating an environment to channel intrinsic motivation was part of this plan, and this prep work revealed I needed a break from Instagram. The mounting frustration with the influx of ads from user-generated content and the difficulty of the algorithm allowing your posts to be seen made me realize I needed to change how I operate. This signaled that the app will likely roll out subscription-based options by causing an extended period of frustration to increase the appeal of a premium option with more control and fewer ads. 

“I’ve noticed that when I’m facing a difficult decision, I often start polling people. That polling habit has become my indicator light that I need less input and more silence and stillness so I can hear myself. Of course I seek counsel from a few people in my life, but when I can’t connect with what I’m thinking or feeling - that’s when I get into dangerous default territory (either standing too far back and not deciding, or letting others decide for me).”
— Brené Brown

The most significant push for me to take an extended break was realizing how much energy I put into valuing engagement, likes, and feedback analytics over the past 7 years. Social media has a lot of pitfalls. Comparison traps when you see someone else doing something similar or perceived as better, leading you to immediately scrap it. Working on something and not sharing about it became a thrill after oversharing out of habit. Polling reactions/opinions and being chronically online was replaced with direct contact through texts to friends and family. It was apparent early on that this new shift was meaningful. Someone my age has seen technology rapidly change. It feels uneasy to even be on any platform over a decade. 

Prepwork

The prep work began in January, with the mentoring session scheduled to start on February 1. The first task was to create a scope of work by saving images to Dropbox. This initially felt daunting, and Kristen suggested automating screenshots to streamline the process. My mindset at the time was how scattered my work felt. It was a combination of operating in perpetual motion and object permanence from concepts, sketches, and paintings tucked away for years. Common threads and patterns appeared. It felt like having a personal retrospective, and I was proud of how much work I have done through the years. To go from “Oh, I’m an artist that does a little bit of everything, kind of all over the place” to this pride knowing I’ve had a spontaneous career path led by humor, bold color palettes, a love for antiques, tchotchkes, and pop culture. 

Kristen requested a portfolio review to sort existing work into collections and suggested new ways to organize my files. I have continuously operated within a theme or group in my career but felt a need to move on if it needed to be better received or if I lost interest. Surface pattern design has always been something I wanted to learn more about, and the process was a lightbulb moment. By taking an existing painting, I could define a hero image and assign supporting design elements into patterns, multiplying its potential. 

Action Plan

With proximity to Spring, I decided to develop a pattern collection under the guidance of Kristen. It felt like a design boot camp that provided the structure and accountability I sought. She created a timeline with checkpoints and deadlines to have product samples in my hands before launching a collection on my website and social media. 

Run Rabbit Run

The project supported by the mentorship was to create a Spring Collection. If you know me, you know I am a Christmas girlie, and maybe I spend my allowance for holiday cheer all in one place. I enjoy many things about Spring and Easter, but we don’t usually decorate the house. I brainstormed about themes, and the bunny rabbit was at the top.

During moments of grief, I’ve encountered Messengers of Hope. Butterflies and moths are the most common. I don’t mean I see one through a window. It will be an interaction that’s impossible to ignore. Like when a dragonfly interacted with me on my way to the car. It flew in, landed on the dash, and hitched a ride. On the 20-year mark of my Mom’s passing, I encountered a wild French Hare as dusk began to reveal the Strawberry Supermoon in the sky. Because I tend to look for magic, I find it in symbolic meaning.

Sprigs of French lavender, the butterfly, and the symbolism of the hare infused a connection with the process that didn’t surface in my earliest attempts. The goal became creating a full illustration, extracting supporting design elements, and remaining within a limited color palette.

Run Rabbit Run

From here, my ideas began multiplying like rabbits. It has always been a dream of mine to see my work on products like textiles, wallpaper, and linens. I tested out a few print on demands options, but would ultimately love to move into licensing my illustration and working with agencies. If you know someone, give me a shout!

When a Midlife Crisis Collides with a Global Pandemic

When time stood still during spring break of 2020, I didn’t know then that I would spend the next year at home with my kids as their virtual school facilitator. It was a constrained choice that I will never regret the privilege of being able to make for their well-being, but it took a toll on my mental health. I don’t know anyone who made it through that period unscathed. 

The real connection we long for is the connection with ourselves; the connection with where we are here and now…When the connection with our own presence is broken everything just starts to feel empty.

—Jeff Foster

The first day of school began remotely in our playroom on August 17, 2020.

The school district kept extending the return to in-person learning and had a feeling it would be for the entire semester. Virtual learning resumed after the holidays on January 5, 2021, with in-person learning scheduled to resume on January 19. 

2021

Winter

The Winter of Discontent

The view from the studio upon my grand return wasn’t too promising, but I remained grateful. It was the coldest winter I could remember in Mississippi.

I turned 40 on February 9, and we had a catastrophic ice storm on Valentine's Day that kept us indoors for five full days. Even though we were used to being at home, the break from having to manage virtual school rekindled the desire to draw and document such a rare event. The Deep South has memorable snow days, but I couldn't recall ever seeing the roads socked out or being stuck indoors for five days.

In a city with an ongoing water crisis, I knew we couldn't escape a thaw without water woes. The district announced a partial return for some schools on March 1, but we remained virtual until one week after Spring Break. 

We took our first post-covid trip to Bentonville, AR, with friends to see the North Forest Lights at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, for Spring Break.

I visited Crystal Bridges by myself and experienced a flood of emotions.

Art museums feel like a sanctuary. After an extended period of isolation, it almost felt like my first time walking into The Met as a teen. I recalled memorable museum visits and the past versions of myself. I felt like a failure. My self-worth was tied to productivity as a metric, and if given the chance to start fresh at that moment, I had no clue what I wanted. I knew I wanted change but was unable to articulate why or how.

I knew I was processing a lot of trauma in this moment and reeled over the trauma I overcame after losing my Mom to suicide when I was 21. It was the defining moment that formed me into the artist I am today and placed me on a journey that made me so resilient. I assumed the elasticity would help me through this, but in March of 2021, I felt trapped under a wet blanket. My identity went through some shape-shifting during motherhood, but this felt gargantuan. Was this a midlife crisis? Was it surviving a global pandemic? Both?

Signs of a Midlife Crisis in Women

Depression, reflection on deep questions or preoccupations with existential concerns, sleep problems, weight changes, feeling apathetic, numb, or generally ‘blah’ about things in life, sense of loss, desiring significant change, extreme feelings of overwhelm, emotional volatility, pervasive feelings of unfulfillment or emptiness, nostalgia for the past, feeling trapped in your life…..

Spring

I started filling pages in a watercolor sketchbook daily. Most of it was observing our neighborhood blossom. Painting in my sketchbook was purely to explore and collect inspiration. The past few years were primarily focused on portrait commissions to provide reliable income, and it was rewarding to not struggle financially as a career artist. I realized how much emphasis I put into marketing myself as a creative business owner. It was reassuring to trust my instinct to know that the operating mode no longer served me and that I was starting a new chapter.

Summer

The extended period of isolation made me grateful to return to normal activities with friends. We joined our community pool and felt a sense of ease this summer. It reminded me of my childhood, spending every day at the YMCA pool, and inspired me to create a series of watercolors.

The Summer of 2021 was when I decided to start dreaming about what I wanted to do next.

Recalibrate.

Reconnection

In July, I signed the kids up for a week long art camp in Ocean Springs, MS. We coordinated plans with friends that week and I spent the time while they were in art camp to recharge and rest. I started to feel a desire to reconnect with past versions of myself, to symbolically retrace steps and reach out to say, “You’re going to be okay, and you are going to meet some incredible people who will change your life forever.” To heal.

This is where my journey as an artist began.

I transferred to William Carey College on the Coast a few weeks after my Mom passed. I could see the water every day on my way to class and began to find magic. I graduated with a BFA in 2004 one year before Hurricane Katrina made landfall and changed the entire landscape of this area of the MS Gulf Coast. It is surreal to have memories of a place that profoundly changed me no longer resemble itself.

A few days after we returned home, I registered for a Visual Journaling retreat in the South of France in the summer of 2022. I took a leap of faith and decided to get specific on how I would spend the next year defining my goals and envisioning the best possible outcomes for my career path.

I knew that my path forward as an artist needed careful introspection and consideration.

It meant redefining how I view success, where I dedicate my attention, and adapting to a more mindful approach from a legacy perspective.