I’ve participated in an online exhibition with four friends who I study with as part of Maydays 2020. Our concept was to link our disparate work under the umbrella of it all being sentimental. Out of this, we made an ebook. Here it is: https://sentimental-preoccupations.com/

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This is not my normal work. 

I wanted this exhibition to be in a gallery space. I wanted big paintings, a mural of strokes and marks splayed out across a wall. I had the gall and the drive and the focus, the intensive energy, to make them. But then that was swiftly kicked out of me in my isolation, in the denial of the resources and the space and the human socializing I needed to best make works. Now I have to make smaller works, and that is not my preference.

I write for myself very often and I take a lot of photographs as well, but I usually keep that all private. It counts as record-keeping, for me. Just filing and organizing of information that my future self may find useful to analyze. Which I often do. But I don’t see it as my art practice, even if it indirectly informs my paintings. However, in this online publication, it is my art practice. Because it has to be, out of necessity. 

I usually don’t really like explaining my paintings. Here, I mock that a bit.

What is the experience of someone looking at my paintings? Do they try to take the bait of the varied narratives I leave? Do they try and piece things together, to figure me out? Psychoanalyze me, a little?

I know that they do, because I do the same, privately, when I look at the work of other artists. My teachers speak in academic terms, but I know they make assumptions about me based on the content of my paintings. That’s natural and expected, and I truly don’t mind. That is a consequence of me showing my work to others. Necessarily, my art is very personal and to view it is almost emotional voyeurism. I have to be somewhat comfortable with that in order to be an artist. Curiosity is then welcomed. There is strength in vulnerability.

But I do not have to answer every question. Or any question at all, actually, unless I want to. Not every question has an answer. Many questions are unanswered. That is life, and that makes it interesting.

A valid dissection of me can theoretically be made based on my paintings. But my personhood and intentions and presumed life experiences can also be easily misconstrued, projected on, mistaken, plain wrong. There’s danger in false conclusions assumed as truth. Each viewer who tries to interpret my paintings adds their own mark, impression, fingerprints to that interpretation, whether or not they feel bold enough to say it to me.

Sometimes I enjoy being unseen, and not having excess attention drawn to myself. Though, I can conversely wield attention when I need to. I am loud and quiet. It’s no good for an artist to have a reticent ego, or so people keep implying to me. But I think it is very good for an artist to be a little mysterious. Yet I’m never intentionally mysterious, I just do what makes the most sense to me in any given moment. And for some funny, unknown reason that makes some confusion to other people, I suppose.

Here are the websites of the four other sentimental preoccupants: Montserrat, Polina, Paola, and Milica. 

To a future of gardens ?