A New Process
The Evoke Collection is a totally different body of work than I’ve been creating recently. I had been planning to continue doing work inspired by trips I had taken around the world, and I honestly just fell into the Evoke Collection. Some background you need to know in order to understand how I got here - I’ve been dealing with chronic pain for over 11 years now. It’s been a long journey, and it’s not one that will seemingly wrap up anytime soon (you can read more about it here). A friend who has lupus sent me a poem about pain that was written by her friend who was severely injured in a car accident years ago. I felt known by his words in a way that I rarely feel. I couldn’t shake the thoughts of the poem from my mind, and I knew I needed to process them in my own way.
I grabbed a big wooden panel I had prepped for a painting and I took a stick of charcoal and wrote his poem onto the panel. It was messy and uneven, yet beautiful. I won’t share his poem since they aren’t my words to share, but there was one part that I connected to the most. He had written about how pain is a path that no one choses to walk, and it is a journey that has to be walked alone. This isn’t to say that I don’t have friends & family who support me, but that they can’t literally take any of my pain away. I have to deal with it alone. Reflecting on his words, an image of a lonely path came to mind - a hauntingly beautiful one. I pulled out my oil paints and began to paint over the charcoal. Charcoal doesn’t stay put when it is painted over. It mixes with the paint and dulls the colors. Parts of the words escape through the thinned paint, almost like ghosts of what lies underneath. I didn’t feel the need to make it an obvious landscape, because it was more about the feeling than the image.
As I was finishing up this piece, the idea of having some sort of line that symbolized the words of the poem moving through the painting came to mind. I picked up the brightest white paint with my brush and created these lines, threads connecting the painting back to the poem. Threads that move us forward and continue journeying with us. I’ve been trying to figure out how to describe these lines that made their way into all of the pieces in the painting. They’re more of a feeling than an idea. A force that connects the poems and songs to the painting and to us. They symbolize the emotions that drive us through the words, and the connection that comes with being understood. They're the pull to past and the growth that moves you forward. These threads symbolize life, like the blood in our veins.
It felt cathartic to process the poem through creating. I felt connected to my work in a completely different way than I have in the past, and I wanted more. Songs felt like a logical progression, since they are essentially poems put to music. Although I’m not musical myself, I feel a deep connection to music. There are some songs that have stuck with me for decades, and other newer ones I could listen to on repeat all day because they draw me into their worlds. I also asked others what their favorite songs and poems are. Through this, I discovered new ones that paintings were born out of. There are seven pieces in this collection. I could have kept going forever, but I had to limit myself for now. In the Evoke Collection, there are paintings of two poems and five songs. I’ll write about the inspiration for each piece in the description in the shop so you can understand how I got there with each piece. This is a really vulnerable collection. I feel like my heart really went into it. My hope is that it resonates as deeply within your soul as it has in mine.
The Evoke Collection will be released at noon on April 14th, 2023, but Collector’s List Members will get early access to the collection at 10AM.