Letters to Myself
Paintings from Artist Residency In Vernon BC
Accompanied by journal entries
6 x 8", oil on gessoed 8 ply, 2025
Art journaling is not merely a form of self-care; it is a powerful tool for personal development, emotional resilience, and self-discovery.*
Words of Affirmation in my Studio:
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I do what I love (including other peoples art: learn from them in colour combinations, themes and compositions) And try to remember their names!
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I follow my heart and persevere in telling my inner/outer world
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My word is worth listening to and seeing
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My heart is safe even when exposed because my light is life
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I am present and I am doing my best
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I understand it is a process and I give myself grace
Over the years I have collected stacks and stacks of journals, chronicling my emotional states and experiences in life. When I look back in and read these journals, I am transported to that state as an observer. What would you do if you could go back in time and visit yourself? Reading my old journals, I get a little taste of this time travel. I see a past version of myself and the tactile pen to paper record is a direct archive to the past.
Keeping this in mind, my artist residency in Vernon BC was a process-focused endeavour. I explored plein air painting for the first time, and accompanied journaling alongside it. I discovered that writing gave me permission to make mistakes and just be myself while painting offered the visual reward. I hope Letters to Myself inspires you to express your own voice, visual or otherwise.
*https://www.rmcad.edu/blog/expressive-journeys-understanding-art-journaling/-
My forbidden light blue oil stick taunts me. Use me! Use me! (Everytime I use it, I get so scared of watching the wax gold shrink and the painting turns into an insecure disaster). Maybe I’ll just try it as the background. It’s sticky, gritty, and buttery all in one. This is the first time I’m using it without insecurity and I love it. It’s the star of the show.
I play with the line between realism and abstraction because I am interested in that moment when a work of art shifts the focus from looking into a window and rather pays attention to the quality of the window itself. There is a barrier between the moment of creation and its future existence. Wet, fresh, in progress transformed through cured oil paint.
This self portrait never ends. I paint it and then wipe it away. I can’t tell if it’s good or not. It has been eight hours. It is time to give up this entanglement of muddy paint . The material will do the talking. I pull out my stallion, the blue oil stick. No longer am I trapped by the cycle of trying to capture my likeness (impossible because I can't truly see myself, but am still invested in one day I will be able to). I fall inlove with the blue and all that practice beforehand seems to have paid off. I have done the right thing, and appear, within a world of skies.
