This is the most personal piece that I've painted in a year. In my head I also consider it the first piece I've created all year that follows my "artistic canon." While entrenched in a mental and emotional shift so intense that I had to take a hiatus from my work, I found myself doing a lot of reflecting. I heavily questioned myself as an artist, and my worth as a person. I struggled with finding a connection to a certain hope about it all. It wasn't always clear where to find that source, and self-assurance constantly fell short. Many conversations with myself began with "Why" and "How," most of which leading to conclusions which felt outside of my control...and then having to learn to be ok with that. I suppose that's probably a pretty obvious "lesson," but I'm definitely not there yet still. It seemed appropriate to take a cue from this period of my life as the inspiration for this self-portrait, because I imagine that this type of struggle is what a lot of us have experienced at some point, or repeatedly, in life. The result being what I think is one of my strongest pieces to date.At this point in my art career I've officially accepted self-portraiture as a major aspect of my work. I noticed that I'm always returning to myself as a subject. Why? What is compelling me to depict so much of myself in my work? After much contemplation, I think that it comes from the compulsion to evaluate myself, my desires, and my place in the world as well as in my immediate circles of influence. Aside from the need to express myself, perhaps I may be trying to preserve pieces of myself in doing this. If I continue to do self-portraits (which is very likely) I think eventually the series will come to be a record of my mortality, adding a bit of a morbid tone to the collection. However, I don't think it's at that point quite yet.I don't feel much conflict about who I am or what I want, but when I uncover something new about myself or become fixated on an issue in my life I think it deserves to be documented. Maintaining this acute self-awareness has dominated my brain for quite some years now. As I get older, I've noticed that how I choose to react to my circumstances has come to feel more and more like mental chess. The stakes feel heavier. The act of defining, tempering and acting on my emotions and intentions becomes more complex. I see that I'm constantly challenged with thinking at least 2 steps ahead before doing anything, and questioning everything. So much of what had come to motivate me and sustain me felt like it had betrayed and abandoned me. In the darkest of times, try as one might, there's no way to view that as a freeing or positive thing. That shit ain't no setback leading to a setup for a comeback. Sometimes, shit just sucks. And it sucks for a long time. Even when you try to be positive, nothing feels good or hopeful. Never before have I ever been this skeptical or helpless about life. I can't even count how many times I've asked myself, "What's the point of any of this?" and "Why the fuck I even here?" "What am I doing?" "Is this all there is?" What else can I do? Nothing ever seems to be enough. Through it all though, I guess I've come to the conclusion that since I'm still here, then I have to keep trying to give myself a chance and make the best of it all. Perhaps each day of existence is the offering of hope. I don't know...Again, it seemed appropriate for me to make a painting to reflect this existential stage that I'm in. So I approached this self-portrait with mostly intentional decisions about color and technical application. I thought a lot of about depicting transitions and a certain conflict in the mood of this piece, because that's exactly what I think that I've been going through. The colors in the background choppily blending into each other the way that harsh truths have appeared in my life over the last 4 years or so. I no longer want to present myself as the brooding insomniac, sad girl like in previous iterations. This version of myself I think has evolved into something more mature and complex. With "Self-Portrait at 34" I wanted to dig a bit deeper to reveal a part of myself that I see and acknowledge but am not usually forthright about. This is a person who is pensive, vulnerable, sensitive, anxious, and passionate. There is skepticism and hope. Moody grays, specifically in the body, present themselves in the piece to symbolize the uncertainties and conflicts that I continue to carry with me. I also see it as a dead area, as if a part of me has hardened into stone. However it's not something that I think consumes me as much as it did before, I sometimes wonder if I may be softening up. The grays that transition to the bright reds is something that I wanted to use to add a bit of tension as well as visual interest. Is the gray about to overcome the red or vice-versa? Or is it moving at all? I wanted to use the red to defy the blues that I've used in previous self-portraits, but also to hint at the passion that I think is within me. The leaking breast motif pops up again in this piece, a symbol that I think I'll do a separate blog post on, showing an overflow of deeply hidden emotions and perhaps even some pain. I used gold leaf in a distressed way in this piece, to reflect how I see myself: precious yet worn. It's a bit of a nod to the past, as gold leaf was much more prominent in older works of art from centuries ago, and how I constantly pull from the past to help define the present or inform the future. I also like the association the process of gold leafing has to the human hand, emphasizing the idea of "the mark of the artist."I think that's as far as I'm going to go with discussing that piece in this post. Something special definitely happened in the process of making that self-portrait and I think I surprised myself. Now that it's finished and by allowing even myself to be affected by it, I do feel a bit more encouraged about making new work moving forward. But please don't feel bound to my explanation of the elements and inspiration behind this self-portrait, as there could be some sub-conscious meanings or associations that I may have a blind eye towards. I would love to hear your thoughts on the painting. What resonates with you? Hit me up in the comments section.If you'd like to hear more thoughts/discussion on this piece, check out this YouTube video or follow me on instagram and join in.
Where You Been At? JOGGERS
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This post has been a really long time coming. I struggled with how much I wanted to reveal here, and how long to make this post. Or if any of this was relevant. There's a fuckton of stuff that I write in here but shit who even reads this blog? Maybe one loyal, consistent reader (Hey Antoinette!!). Well, this post will be a slight deviation from art-talk and will get a little personal. If you follow me at all, maybe you've noticed that I've been away for a while, only poking my head out here and there. I think it's been about 6 months at least. During this time I have barely done any painting at all, by choice. It was a strange yet necessary shift. However I think that now I'm ready to start creating and sharing again.Now that we're well into 2018, I think that I can say that I'm finally done with sorting through the aftermaths of my movements in 2017. It was a year of extreme highs and lows in my art life and my personal life. Some of which I mentioned casually here and there in my art vlog. Once I returned from my artist residency over the summer, the last few months of the year ended up being a slow realization that I needed to take a breather. I needed a break from making art in general, and making art from certain emotions. I definitely needed a break from people. I also needed a break from the mindset that my art needed to take me somewhere, or that every piece that I did needed to count. Perhaps somewhere along the way there was an expectation that had I attached to my art-making that made the experience stressful and deterred me from creating. Perhaps it was simply burn-out. Looking back I think that it may have started with experiencing huge disappointments and setbacks from my residency. Then there was the exhaustion from two cross-country roadtrips within 6 weeks. Then I was sent over the edge by the mental and emotional suck of a heart re-broken immediately upon my return home. All of those things left me confused, frustrated, isolated and depressed - and that was just the tip of it. I was hit by a breadth of hurt feelings that were on borrowed time, before having to quickly internalize it all again and shove on. It's a struggle because in my mind, I can't afford to show a weakness, or be too emotional or, shudder to think, angry. "Strength," even if it's false, is what I have to cling to. There are no safety nets for me here. Life was presenting itself to me in a way that prompted me to question everything that I was doing, from my artwork to my personal relationships. I had finally hit a wall and couldn't rebuild the momentum. So, reluctantly, I took a step back from it all.For the last 5 years, a large part of my life was about grinding, producing, trying to achieve a certain ratio of input:output. But then I just couldn't anymore. I physically could NOT. The ideas were there, but my morale was on "E." I wasn't sure how long I needed to be off, I just knew that I couldn't create anything. I wanted to give up, to just stop doing art. I constantly questioned what it was all for and lamented that I didn't seem to be getting any closer to what the "next level" was for me. It was the darkest place that I had to navigate through in a long time. Fellow creative friends supported the decision to chill and regroup, telling me that it was not worth quitting. Telling me that I was too talented to stop, and shit like that. Suggesting that what I was feeling was most likely burnout and that I should redirect my efforts for a while, then see how I feel about painting. I didn't even know if whatever they said was true but I was so, so tired and discouraged. A hiatus was going to happen regardless, for lack of any other options.What ended up happening during this break was a lot of reflection and a lot of straight chillin. Eventually I was inspired enough to sit down and take inventory of the creative ideas and pursuits that still interested me. I was surprised that there was quite a lot that I wanted to do...at some point. I was still a long way off from executing anything at the time. It took me a while to actually relax and allow myself to be ok with not creating anything for a while. Sometimes we may find ourselves conditioned to think that any day without work or progress is a day wasted - which is not always true. My time off ended up being something like a "recharge." I can't speak to how beneficial it is to force oneself to work or be creative no matter what, though maybe I should try that sometime - I might get a lot more work done. What I do know is that stepping away periodically can have the effect of re-motivating a person to continue. Or it could be the palate-cleansing act that leads one to conclude that they should move on to something else. Sheeeit, it was almost the latter for me! I was feeling so defeated that I was about ready to quit art altogether. It was as if I was doing so much without really getting anywhere, and having no foresight about when things could or would get better. Of course, most artists know that that's a part of what we sign up for, but that doesn't make it easier unfortunately. During the break I found myself naturally being creative regardless of how worn-out I felt. It wasn't anything too heavy, and I refrained from painting the whole time. I started playing around with some greeting card designs:
For a little while I was running a weird Instagram page where I make crude drawings, mostly by random requests (I need to start doing that again, I really fell off). This drawing was requested by a stranger:
I also started up an artist podcast, Art Life Confidential, where I share tips and topics pertaining to pursuing your creative goals post-college. This was a project that I'd been meaning to get off the ground for a while. Unfortunately, I've fallen behind on that too! Now that I'm trying to get back into a painting routine, it's been a struggle to accommodate all of the new things that I started while on my brain break. There never seems to be enough hours in the day. Self-discipline and self-motivation can be tough habits to form, and I took a risk by breaking my streak. From this point I'm just hoping that I can get it all back to where I need to be.
And of course, there's my art vlog (Traci L. Turner Art on YouTube) and all of my other spaces around the internet, including this site and blog. I've been able to sort of keep up with making videos at least, though now I've decided to post on a monthly schedule. Since things have slowed down for me and I've been trying to initiate a shift in direction with my art career, it didn't make sense to me anymore to commit to a weekly or bi-weekly posting schedule. There wasn't much to talk about, and I really just didn't want to be seen. So I've been going with that feeling in just about every other aspect of my online representation. I'm falling back and minimizing everything. There seems to be so much pressure for us to try to find ways to stay in people's faces and constantly post things in an effort to cling to whatever little relevancy that we think we have. Sure it may be effective for some people or in certain circumstances, but I didn't want to feel like I had to keep subscribing to that. Not when it comes to presenting myself, or my artwork. Where everything that I do has to be traced back to a "brand" or some sort of carefully curated presence or idea of me. There's no tone or image that I'm trying to project. Fuck outta here with alldat. My real life is not a fuckin mood board, so I don't want my movements online to appear that way either. Of course, there's a balance in sharing things with the public. I am in no way saying that I'm about to start getting extremely transparent! I'll probably never be that person. I just mean that I decided that it's not important to me anymore to share things online for social media clout or attention, or even to be "discovered." If any of that happens on its own, then cool. I'll roll with it. At this point whatever I share, however I decide to share it, will be solely because I want to, for self-expression, and to share with those who genuinely care about what I'm up to in life. So yeah, cleaning up my online imprint was another thing that I decided to work on improving as well.Shit, I think I might be taking that same fallback approach in my personal life too. It seems like with each year that passes I find myself pulling back more and more. These days I think it's becoming more obvious to me that I'm a much different version of myself than I was 5 years ago. I do a lot more watching and waiting. I'm not as open and happy-go-lucky as I once was. The range of emotions that I allow myself to share with others has narrowed significantly. The fact that I'm even trying to assume that much control over something like that is a huge change as well. All of which could probably be traced to being emotionally and spiritually worn the fuck out. If there was a way for me to describe the shift, I guess I'd say that I've retained the core of who I am but I'm much more subdued, and I practice a hell of a lot more compartmentalization. I'm sure compartmentalizing is to be expected once one reaches a certain point in life, but the degree of which I see myself doing it surprises me sometimes. There are so many divides and categories: in my friendships, at my job, in my free time and even between myself and my artwork. All of this reminds me of an old blog post that I did here a few years ago, where I first decided to publicly acknowledge the shift that I noticed within myself. Since then, I often wonder if what I've been experiencing over the last few years is the slow and painful realization of the depth of my naïveté. Many harsh truths have been revealed to me or had to be relearned, and I certainly feel worse for wear. I'm willing to admit that maybe some of this more methodical approach to life is partially in reaction to some of these "lessons," perhaps even an extreme reaction in some cases. At any rate, all of that shit came to a head, along with everything else I described earlier in this post, at about the same damn time and I've been trying my best to regroup ever since. I want to believe that things are in a better place than 6 months ago, but it's honestly hard to tell sometimes.At least the art stuff is slowly moving along and coming around again I guess - it's literally all that I have. I'll try my best to check back in on here more regularly and to share pictures as I complete projects and add things to the site. In the meantime, please feel free to hit me up! The comments section is always open and I love to hear your thoughts. If you need a refresher, get caught up on my previous posts on this blog and/or check for me in all of my other online spaces:
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Cross-Country Shawty
[et_pb_section bb_built="1" admin_label="section"][et_pb_row admin_label="row" background_position="top_left" background_repeat="repeat" background_size="initial"][et_pb_column type="4_4"][et_pb_text background_position="top_left" background_repeat="repeat" background_size="initial" _builder_version="3.0.93" background_layout="light" module_alignment="left"]This update is outrageously late, but I thought that I would put it out there anyway just so that it has a place here. Plus, I want to make sure that I rightly covered 2017 before doing a post about my plans for 2018. So here are some pictures from my cross-country trip to the East Coast to complete an artist residency at the Torpedo Factory in Alexandria, VA. I didn't take a shit-ton of pictures because most of my time was spent driving for hours, then chillin in basic hotels until the next day of driving. There also wasn't a whole lot to see because my route was pretty straight-forward. When I did take some time to explore, I was enjoying the moment and didn't think to take pictures all the time. Overall I will say that the country is beautiful, I met many cool people, enjoyed a lot of great food and I'm very happy that I drove across it and back. I had fun. It truly is a "rite of passage" type of journey. Though I have to admit that it wasn't my preferred choice of travel! Roadtrips do not excite me at all. So if you're wondering why I made it a cross-country trip, the reasons were pretty simple. I decided to drive to the residency to avoid the costs and uncertainties of shipping all of my things, and not have to worry about the cost of renting a car for 6 weeks. After weighing all of the factors, driving all the way there myself was the most practical and cost-effective option. From the info that I was able to gather about residencies, a lot of people choose to do that because most residency programs are unpaid and everything is coming out of the artist's pocket anyway. So...there ya go.If you missed some of the photos that I shared on my instagram page, you no longer have to miss out. Check out the gallery below! Also if you haven't seen my YouTube videos from the residency, check out my earlier post here. Come back soon though, because my next blog post will be a meaty one - talking about what's been going on with me and things that I'm hoping for this year. Stay tuned...[/et_pb_text][et_pb_gallery _builder_version="3.0.51" show_title_and_caption="on" show_pagination="on" gallery_ids="2019,2018,2012,2011,2010,2009,2008,2007,2029,2014,2023,2017,2020,2021,2016,2022,2025,2026,2027,2028,2030" fullwidth="on" orientation="landscape" zoom_icon_color="#bf677e" hover_overlay_color="rgba(255,255,255,0.9)" background_layout="light" border_style="solid" auto="off" /][et_pb_blurb admin_label="gallery title" _builder_version="3.0.93" url_new_window="off" use_icon="off" use_circle="off" use_circle_border="off" icon_placement="top" use_icon_font_size="off" background_layout="light" border_style="solid" animation="top" title="Some photos from the road!" text_orientation="center" /][/et_pb_column][/et_pb_row][/et_pb_section]