frivolous joys

This collection started coming together before I knew it by name. I didn’t intentionally sit down and say, “I’m going to paint my joy.” Rather, I noticed myself becoming more a student of artwork and artists that evoked joy and playfulness within me. 

For so long, my art-making has come as an impulse to metabolize my grief, anxiety, doubt and pain. I’m grateful for this tool, but in this series, I explore other aspects of myself — namely my joy. I became a student in artists and works that evoked joy and playfulness in me — Kate Eliza’s playful, atmospheric abstract paintings. Helen Frankenthaler’s movement-rich abstractions. Katherine Bradford’s loose and playful representational paintings.

In the work, I develop a deeper catalog of mark making — the crescent moon I was born under! the joyful squiggly of a notebook doodle! the writhing body of the white corn snake that lived in my classroom in my life as a teacher! circles and semi-circles — markers of wholeness and the cyclical nature of life! — and explore the essentially of joy in not only our creativity but in our life.