Why I Paint the Way I Do

Why I Paint the Way I Do

A few years ago I wanted a bold, abstract statement piece for my dining room. I could not find one I loved, and could not afford an original that fit what I had in mind, so I decided I would paint it myself. I bought a 24x30 canvas and then got distracted painting other things instead, which was partly intentional. I had not painted in years, and I needed the practice before I trusted myself with something that size. Still not entirely confident, I started sketching an idea out in Procreate, and before I knew it I had created something pretty great. It was not even abstract. It turned out to be a landscape, nothing like what I had originally planned. It was good enough that I did not bother trying to paint it after all. I had it printed and custom framed instead.

Here is the funny part. A landscape is about as far from what I actually make now as it gets. But something about making that piece lit up a part of me that had been quiet for a while, and I have not really stopped painting since.

Painting Was Always the One I Came Back To

I honestly do not remember when I started painting outside of school art classes, but I do remember a particular class I took in college that changed how I thought about making things at all. The instructor was a little unhinged, in the best way, endlessly encouraging and fun, and she used to call us children of the corn while we worked. The whole class was built around creating intuitively and freely, with no real interest in getting things right. Something about that permission stuck with me for good.

Since then I have moved through a lot of different creative outlets. Drawing, weaving, pottery, jewelry making, interior design, web design. But painting is the one I always circled back to in between everything else. It never felt like a hobby or a side project the way the others sometimes did. It felt more like a part of me, while the rest of it was just things I did.

Why Now

For a long time, I knew I needed to step away from web design. The long hours at a computer had started showing up in my neck and shoulders in ways that were hard to ignore, and if I am honest, I could also see the writing on the wall for that industry more broadly, with AI already reshaping a lot of the work I used to do by hand. Moving away from this was never really in question.

What took much longer to become clear was what I wanted to step toward. I did not want to solve the income question by simply taking on more clients, since that would have meant more draining hours and more sitting, just a different version of the same problem. So I sat with that unclear middle for a long time, knowing I could not really make a move until what I wanted to move toward came into focus.

The dining room piece was the first hint of it, before I fully understood what it meant. Once I let myself actually contemplate art as something real rather than something on the side, my next move became clear fast. It was healthier for my body. It was creative in a way nothing else in my work life had been for a long time. It gave me a reason to build community in person again. And it offered the kind of challenge I genuinely love, building something new in an entirely different industry, learning as I go. I am at a point in my life where what I need is expansion and expression, not constriction, not hustle, not another decade of painful hours hunched over a screen.

There is a bigger version of this that I think about often too. I have carried around an image for years of a small coastal village somewhere in Europe, where I spend my days painting and gardening, trading paintings and vegetables for whatever else I need, living a modest but genuinely sweet life. I can smell the sea every day in that image. Art and beauty are everywhere. I have learned the language, I am immersed in the culture, and there is very likely some excellent Mediterranean food involved.

I do not live in that village. But stepping toward painting feels like the first real move toward a version of that life, even here. Bainbridge Island is really not a bad consolation prize.

No Formal Training

I am mostly self-taught. I took plenty of art classes as a kid and young adult, but nothing formal beyond that, and the biggest influence on how I paint still traces back to that one free, intuitive college class rather than years of technical instruction. Lately though, I have been digging into more focused study online, composition, value, brushwork, color mixing, the more technical pieces of the craft. Being a free, gestural, intuitive painter does not mean working without any structure at all. It just means the structure sits underneath the freedom instead of in front of it.

How I Paint

Most of the time, I start with nothing more than a chosen color palette, and I hold that palette loosely. If it stops working partway through, I change it without much hesitation. Other times I have a bit more of a plan going in, usually because something specific has inspired me, a composition idea, a particular brushstroke or mark I want to explore. Occasionally, when I have a fairly vivid image in my mind, I will sketch it out in Procreate first. Since I can work in layers digitally, that translates naturally into layers on the canvas once I start painting for real.

The Psychology Underneath the Painting

I paint in a very psychologically flexible way. Releasing control. Accepting what looks like a mistake instead of correcting it immediately. Sitting with uncertainty rather than rushing to resolve it. Staying present, and staying connected to what I am actually feeling instead of what I think I am supposed to be doing.

One thing I feel genuinely grateful for is the timing of all this. I am doing this at a stage of life where I do not care nearly as much about what other people think. I do not need everyone to get me, or my art, and I am not making it for anyone's approval the way I might have when I was younger and did not know myself yet, back when it was easier to outsource my sense of worth to whoever happened to be watching.

I get to make this work exactly the way I want to make it. That feedom comes from years of psychological and emotional growth, the kind that eventually changes how you move through everything, including a blank canvas.

And there is something else I have picked up along the way that feels worth naming too, the fact that I have learned to trust myself to stay diligent with anything I decide matters enough to keep showing up for, even when it gets hard. The art, the business, all of it. That trust did not exist in me twenty years ago either. I am glad to have it now.

Why Abstract, Specifically

Representational art wakes up my inner perfectionist almost instantly, the part of me convinced that nearly anything can be improved if I just work at it a little longer. When I imagine sitting down to paint something representational, I can feel my body curl inward, tense, the same way it used to feel after too many hours at a computer.

Large format abstract work does the opposite entirely. My body opens up. I am moving, I am on my feet, and something in me settles into a kind of ease I do not get anywhere else. It is the difference between shrinking and expanding, and I would choose expanding every time.

One Last Thing

Now that you know a little more about where all of this comes from, I would love for you to spend some time with the paintings themselves. You can look through the collections whenever you like, and if you want to see new work as it is finished, the Studio List is the easiest way to stay in the loop.

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