Art is a lot of fun when it’s not making me feel terrible about myself. It has the power to make me feel like a waste of space, fill me with anxiety for investing so much of my life in creating things to hang on a wall. Although, I think that last part won’t be as much of an issue any more after having watched the curling event on the Olympics last week.

But sometimes art makes me feel really excited and inspired and truly fulfilled, and I guess that it’s those moments, however rare, that keep me coming back to make more. There are few things as exciting to me as a blank canvas, and few things as beautiful, powerful, and inspiring to me as taking a walk through a place like the Gardner Museum in Boston. It reminds me of why I love art so much and why I can’t really imagine a life without it.

The three images [above and] below are three different paintings that were done on the same canvas. And there are two more finished paintings buried in there that I don’t have any photos of, one of which I labored and obsessed over for weeks. The [top] one with the big “help” on it is the most current, though I am sure not the final version. This is my process. Paint, repaint, stress out, repeat.

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