I am a new and self-taught contemporary abstract artist currently located in West Hartford, CT (with a planned relocation in late 2024 - early 2025). I began painting in early 2023, but I started THINKING about painting in 2021. I bought some cheap brushes and craft paint from Amazon too, because I didn't know there were different kinds and also I had no clue where to start or if I would be any good or like it. And I kept not knowing where to start either. I'd considered it in the first place hopeful that it would help me to alleviate the increasingly frequent anxiety and panic attacks I was suffering, presumably due to my own inability to cope with the negative toll my mounting medical issues had taken on my life. However, trying to figure out WHAT to paint, and with which colors, out of ALL the things and colors on earth was causing me SO MUCH STRESS I thought it might be a sign that this was NOT the hobby for me.

But then in late 2022, I came across this article on Zhuang Hong-Yi and his flower beds. I was absolutely enthralled by his work, and spent many hours scouring the internet for photos and videos of his beautiful color-changing flowerbeds. It hadn't ever occurred to me that you could paint in three dimensions, and I knew I had to own one, right up until I started doing research and laughed at MYSELF and all twelve of my dollars. I wanted to weep. The last time I'd felt that way I was probably 6 years old, and our class had had a glass blower in. I remember being like I wanted to quit school that moment because nothing else mattered and I asked him if apprentices were still a thing. He told me it was very dangerous - too dangerous for me certainly - and one mistake breathing in and you'd burn your lungs up forever. I remember being so sad, I wanted to have and make tiny pretty colorful things, but the expert said it wasn't for me. And now, these overwhelmingly gorgeous and original creations, that kind of skill surely had to be out of reach for me as well, I just knew it. I hadn't even the imagination to have considered texture an option. So I STILL didn't paint - I pouted, hard. And this went on into early 2023.

His paintings haunted me in a way nothing ever had. I made a few lame attempts with the craft paint and had found it sort of relaxing, but ultimately I made ugly ass mostly brown art that not even a mother could love. And every single night I went back to obsess over Zhuang Hong-Yi's flower beds, even though it broke my heart every fucking time.

Looking at my tiny bottles of crappy craft paint, I started wondering: this can't be the same paint that made these masterpieces, can it? So, I looked it up, and was pleased to find myself right for once: it WASN'T. But I learned about all the different types of paint - and also that his flower beds are also made out of folded rice paper, another skill I did not possess.

Still, I wanted to keep trying, and bought myself some cheap heavy body acrylics. I looked for inspiration on Instagram for art made with heavy body acrylic paints, and saw SO MUCH beautiful, abstract textured art! But the more of it I looked at, the more I began having an opinion on them, and what I'd maybe have done differently. And suddenly it seemed almost doable - and thoughts of how I WOULD do it, if I were going to, had begun occupying much of my time.

At this point in my life, I spent nearly all of my time on medical research, or at medical appointments or doing one of the many other unpleasant but necessary medical admin that comes with being chronically ill and taking controlled substances. I started spending more and more time watching other artists on social media just creating art however they do it, and searching forums and tutorials when I came across things that interested me. I found Justin Gaffrey's art, and then his paint line of gorgeous thick shiny pipe-able acrylic paint - so I began learning how to pipe flowers. I was looking for an escape wherever I could find it, beauty wherever I could find it, and baby, I found it. Eventually, armed with better paint and mediums and a refreshed knowledge of color theory, I decided that even if the art was bad, even IF it was all brown, I was going to put paint on some things.

And it wasn't long before I made something that wasn't brown, OR ugly. And from that moment on, I became obsessed. All of a sudden, I could see how to get there - to the future where I was standing in front of a masterpiece that I created, and even in imagination only it felt INCREDIBLE. Most of all, it felt POSSIBLE. Like the universe had finally gotten me to a realization it had been nagging away at me over for many, many months. And even in imagination, it could soothe this strange new low-level longing ache somewhere deep in my heart where the 6-year-old girl still lives with the disappointment of being told she couldn't make tiny glass flowers.

And even still, thinking about it feels the same. I think it's this feeling that is at its core what drives the compulsion to paint. All in service of this moment that I have absolutely imagined many years in the future that nonetheless I can FEEL already. Someday in reverse, until I am skilled and capable enough, and I can see what it looks like and create something worthy of a feeling strong enough to compel me through a lifetime to seek it. It feels right, and like I might just get to do it - I can't say WHY it feels that way, only that once it became an option, it became the ONLY option.

I have so much still to learn, and my art, what it is, hasn't landed anywhere, on any "style", and I don't know that it ever will. That being said, I am very new, always learning and looking for opportunities to grow and expand upon how to create art and experience life and I intend to do just that, as soon as I am able.

The medical stuff:

This may appear inappropriate or irrelevant, but is unfortunately a majorly influential factor in my life. The story of how I got sick is ultimately the story of how I found art [[[ and how I figured out my husband was not what he said he was, but that's a story for another time ]]] Getting sick drove me to art, and I don't believe in a god with a plan but I DO believe in cosmic irony and here is proof on a plate:

I discovered via MRI in 2020 that my debilitating lifelong headaches were caused by a congenital brain condition called a Chiari malformation that required surgery - and whether by coincidence or by cause and effect the following years would see me diagnosed with several other rare diseases, nearly all of them chronic and incredibly painful. I had brain surgery in 2020 and another to fix the first one in 2022. I had endometriosis removal surgery in 2021 - after many [(Like M-A-N-Y, IYKYK)] years of suffering with stage 5 endometriosis - and it came back plus more like, INSTANTLY. I am happy to say that I was FINALLY granted a hysterectomy in 2023 and am at least free of THAT particular pain. However, that aside, for a long time a plan of treatment for my other conditions eluded me, and I kept getting sicker seemingly without cause. The worst of such diseases, Dercum's Disease and Diffuse Lipomatosis cause painful subcutaneous and infiltrating benign tumors that slowly became apparent all over my body and invading my musculature and constricting them, and in some cases compressing nerves including the occasional entrapment of my sciatic nerve. It's highly inconvenient and massively painful and of course, interferes with my daily life a TON. I am just, riddled with tumors.

As of August 2024, I am awaiting negotiations between my health insurance company and a specialized surgeon whom I finally found(!) to schedule the first of a proposed 5-7 surgeries to remove as many of these masses from my body as possible, which will be a painful and lengthy journey in and of itself.

All of this to say that I am disabled, much of my time is consumed with medical care and sometimes lengthy recoveries when I am too unwell to create. While I am ultimately grateful that I found art, it very much limits not only the volume and frequency of what I create, but WHAT I create as well. I am often in pain or otherwise unwell, and take many medications that affect me in many ways good and bad. My body is an unpredictable little bitch at best that I hate most of the time - pretty much anytime it's NOT creating, as is the nature I imagine of all chronically ill people who find power in artistic ventures as I do.

For years before I began painting I had been desperately trying to get help, but to be frank: doctors thought I was just getting fat. They did not believe me when I told them that something was wrong, and that I could not lose weight no matter what. As the tumors grew, and the pain with it, they became more dismissive assuming the worst of me and my lifestyle. Amidst the pandemic, multiple brain surgeries, and severe endometriosis that had spread to other organs and ATTACHED them to one another - all the while suffering confusing, covert abuse from a narcissistic psychopath who I fucking LOVED....and I couldn't figure out why I kept getting sicker.

And then I found this thing. This beautiful thing that if I could make it, I touch it, be near it. All this darkness, and one man created something so powerful it pulled me right the fuck back out, and led me to what feels suspiciously like PURPOSE.

I want to do that, for someone. Move them to the point of living again.

I ask for your understanding and patience with me while I navigate my illnesses, treatment, recovery, probable relocation, impending divorce BUT most importantly: continued growth and evolution as an artist and as a human. The art and updates via the blog will come as I am able.

It is for these reasons that I do not accept commissions at this time - while I do sell my art, its main function in my life is therapeutic, and I cannot hope to continue to heal and grow by restricting my creative process or attempting to duplicate pieces made via my usual entirely intuitive process. It's via this process that both my art and mental wellbeing have flourished, and it simply cannot be compromised.

I am so incredibly grateful that anyone is interested in me and my art at all and am happy to answer any questions you may have about it. It all still doesn't feel real, and I hope it never does. I have so many ideas for some potentially really insane and cool projects, and for the foreseeable future I intend to grab hold of the ones I can and let them lead me where they may.

I'll take anyone who wants to come with me. I'm so just happy we're here.

Thank you!