Unpacking Fear and Love: The role they each play in our artistic practice

Coalescence | oil on panel | 24” x 24”

The making of abstract paintings has been a great teacher in my life for learning how to make friends with fear.

Fear is the companion to love. The desire to control the unknown and to hope for possibility in the unknown live side by side, their respective power ever shifting within us, ever making us whole.

My painting Coalescence is born out of this kind of movement - needing to be in control and letting go of control, returning to hope by knowing exactly what I want to do then being completely lost in knowing what to do next - and throughout being guided by a deep need to create wholeness through binary values of dark and light being stitched together with a thread of orange.

Out of this journey came the awareness that this painting is about coalescence - “the process of coming or growing together to form a whole.”

As disparate belief systems continue to fracture communities both locally and globally, the threat of planetary destruction becomes a greater reality. The resolution of this painting has strengthened my resolve to kindle harmony within opposing forces through the making and viewing of my work.

This coming WAM Wednesday I invite you to join me in discussing the opposing forces of fear and love and how they each fuel and/or paralyze our artistic expression.

And!
I’ll be “showing and telling” the trajectory of how this painting became Coalescence.

Some sources for you to ponder along with me . . .

Art and Fear by David Bayles and Ted Orland
Addressing the role of fear in the personal and professional realms of being an artist

The War or Art by Steven Pressfield
The aha! chapter is the one about “Resistance” as our biggest inner road block

AI and What it Means to be Human: On Being Podcast with Krista Tippett
A fascinating conversation that changed my fear about AI to hope in it’s power