Carl Jung once said: "Everything that irritates us in others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves."






i've found recently that this concept is barraging me with new considerations...i become too easily annoyed by certain things done by people i live and work with. and i started ask myself why i'm actually annoyed (i've come up with few conclusions). but it keeps me wondering about myself, about people, and about the daily interactions we all have... how amazing it is that we even get words out of our mouths in a coherent fashion.

on a basic plane, art is therapy for me. every time i find myself having a hard time dealing with a situation...i go straight into painting. it's my best cathartic method....this painting i did at a time when i was really frustrated...and actually, i've found these concentric circles around paint splatters to be a theme that has been returning in my art...


i'm a great purveyor of music...currently, i'm enjoying the music of st. vincent... this is one of my favorite videos (a cover of 'these days' by nico):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vxQs84FMWQ&feature=related

all the images i'm taking of my more recent paintings are turning out horribly. perhaps i need to find better lighting... haha

i finished this piece back in september i believe...at the time i was reading the book of ephesians heavily and was struck by the comparisons that were given numerous times between light and dark. in chapter 5 it says..."for you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light". if you think about it, comparisons are a very important part of our lives. there is no way that you can know what light is without having some aspect of darkness. there is no good without evil. opposites define each other...

i'd heard the verse before, but when i read again "wake up oh sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you" my heart was so deeply impacted that it influenced the concept for this piece....some might question how abstract work can have a concept at all. but if you're looking close enough you can find one.

i find it quite stunning that times in which i am most overwhelmed, i am most productive in my art. while studying for 3 psychology classes (2 of which are upper level) and also struggling to complete a teapot for a ceramics 2 class, i find all i want to do is paint. so i stay up several occasions till 3am just going at it, fearing a manic episode of some sort is the cause (when really i'm sure it's just random inspiration and stress).

i started this piece about 3 weeks ago. i'm not satisfied with it, and it's far from done. but it kept me awake 3 hours longer than i intended to be. a common activity done in art therapy is to allow yourself to scribble on a large sheet of paper, emptying any emotion that you have been withholding onto to paper. that's initially what i did here, as i was frustrated with several things happening throughout the week. after unleashing hundreds of yellow waxen scribbles onto the pristine white surface of the paper, i decided i wanted to see how they would work with the acrylic paint i'd been hiding in my closet....so then there was blue... i'm just unhappy with the red at the moment...but i'll fix it sometime.