a message from the artist

I paint because I’m not good at keeping a written journal. Because I often find myself filled to the point of drunk incoherence with passing seasons, music, smells – the energies, impressions, and glimpses of a magic something for which words would never do justice. Those little tastes of life-essence. I paint because I know I have something to say but I don’t always know how to say it. Because the feelings go deeper than words. Painting is my way of processing the inner movements we call emotion. 

For a few years, I dabbled in different techniques and mediums trying to find the voice that would help me say those things in me that don't have words. Then one day, I spilled paint on a canvas and, just as ego clutched at my heart with fear, a voice whispered from within – "Keep going, you can’t plan this.” Which was kind of terrifying to someone who knows she’s a bit of a control freak. But ultimately, it was liberating. Because it wasn’t up to me alone anymore, there was now a co-conspiring energy at work; it had become a conversation with the canvas as copilot, as much as it was a conversation with myself. I could never be in full control of the outcome, only a vessel through which something I hadn’t really planned could be born. 

It was the emotional equivalent of free falling. 

To paint, is to breathe again.

 

~ chelsea