Looking back through Instagram posts, I realize that we've been in this collective holding pattern since the beginning of Spring. From the first crocuses and Lenten roses, to the redbud and cherry trees blooming pink, to the showy and fragrant privets, we've watched and waited from our homes. Some of us have had to brave the invisible menace every day, and some of us have curled ourselves over uncomfortable kitchen counters and dining room tables, making do.
Things still rage outside, but even though this Spring has been an unseasonably cool one here in Appalachia, things feel soft. I feel softer.
I've been painting a lot, with a few commissions here and there. I've been planting, ordering things online and snatching things up from the farmer's market and farm stand here in Maryville when I started to feel a little bit safer. Our cotton masks have become not only a placebo of sorts, but a badge of honor. Even the mountains have been closed to us during this time, and I've imagined them like a secret garden, impossibly purple and green, fuzzy bear cubs gamboling freely, spotted fawns curled up among the cool, unfurling fiddle-head ferns.
I've painted most of my life, with a few years when writing took over as my creative outlet. The act was always a bit of a secret, a wish, a something that brought me calm but made me question my abilities more than any other act. In the seventh grade an art teacher told me I shouldn't try to progress in my training; my work wasn't up to snuff, I should choose another elective. So I wrote stories, I performed in musicals, and I believed her.
Something shifted in me the in the past couple of years, when words became not quite enough of a tool of self-expression. Words are limited in their language. What I say in English may not convey in French, or German. But the visual arts aren't limited by syntax. So here, I offer up my humble paintings for view and purchase in others' homes.
When I paint I think of water. Ocean, rivers, rain. Here in the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains we're surrounded by lakes and rivers that meander. It's a temperate rain forest with more yearly precipitation than the Pacific Northwest. I am inspired by this land, these mountains, these rivers, and the vast, changing light and depths of the ocean.
I'm glad you're here.
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