Making Lemonade

One of the issues I had starting out was materials. I need materials to make paintings, right? All the good paintings I see at galleries and museums are made on stretched canvases. Furthermore, these paintings have texture, rich layers of colors make up their figures. Being a perfectionist can really prevent you from making anything. I wanted to create. So I did.

When we seek, we find. When we change the way we look at things, the things we look at change. We see so much stuff every single day, that most of it is never noticed. I am reminded of packaged bananas, the absurdity. Everything is packaged. A friend of mine gets her meals delivered through a meal service. Every week, a box shows up. 60 by 40 by 30. Cardboard, meant to be discarded. This τέλος (“goal” in ancient Greek, used by Aristotle) was aligned with my own feelings about my paintings at the time.

So, rather than finding some self-worth, I decided to use the alignment. If my art was trash, I might as well use trash to make it. I started to notice my trash was often very interesting. This has lead to a pressing inability to throw things out. I sometimes wake up from a nightmare covered in sweat, thinking I am in the next episode of “hoarders”. On a more serious note, it allowed me to ease up. Economically it helped that I wasn’t spending money on canvas, but in a much more real way it was this: if I don’t like it, I’m just going to toss it, because that’s where it would’ve ended either way.

I have not ‘tossed’ a single thing since.