Thoughts and writing about the Loss of My Life Collection

Next week I am releasing my first spring collection (that's right, there will be 2!)... this one will be filled with abstract oil paintings created largely with palette knife.

I want to say it has been fun painting these but mostly it has been emotionally painful as I've been creating with ideas of loss and what ifs. There's a couple different storylines and relationships I've painted about here but honestly some of these stories are not mine to tell.

One however that is mine to tell is career related. I've been struggling a lot lately with where I'm at with my career, where I wanted to be, how long it is taking me to get to where I want to go and quite honestly the light at the end of the tunnel is dimming for me.

I am often wondering if I should have chosen a different career path. If I should have just kept painting as a hobby and pursued something that quite frankly would have made me more financially stable. Genuinely I don't know if I made the right choices.

A major theme of my art and painting has always been the concept of "home". This looks so different for so many people. I have lived in a lot of different places... sure, one general area like a city for quite a few years, but within that moving lots. I think my count is living in over 25 different places... I'm 30. The house I live in now has been the second longest place and I will say I have struggled to be emotionally connected and have it feel like home. I have been actively working on it but it is still a struggle.

When I left for out west from Ontario in 2017, I had packed my little car with only my art supplies and a month's worth of clothes... I was heading to the west coast of BC for a month long artist residency. I ended up staying in Alberta after that, but was always in a kind of limbo from mid 2017 until ... well... maybe this house I'm in now so summer of 2019? But one thing is I never formally moved out of my parents house. Then last year they listed it and sold it within a month and I didn't have the chance to go across the country and get my crap because it was during my holiday work season (and if you're an artist or small business owner you know what I mean).

So last summer my mom brought out a bunch of containers of my things. And then this past month I went out and helped pack all of my art and any other thing that was mine into my dad's trailer and we drove it back. Just over 7 years later I finally (sort of formally) moved out.