June 8, 2024.

I can smell a storm coming my way on the patio at present. The hammock has begun to ripple it’s tassels in the rising winds that speak of change above my head. Rotund crevices between clouds run a deep gray as they allude to a thunderstorm about to drumbeat atop of me, reminding me, change is inevitable. The sunshine of the afternoon swung into a monsoon. Change, is consistent.

I will never quite understand how we artists, the nutty enough ones who make the decision to embrace the full complexity of this path, in light, dark, ebb, flow, abundance & drought, mental wellness & illness, hold the gift of being able to transmute the pain we experience into something profound beautiful, but, we do. Across the board, the artists whose work has been most impressionable to me have lived lives of scarcity: Vices & addictions, emotional unrest, depression or darkness as I call it these days, schizophrenia, low self worth, survival of physical, sexual abuse and violence, take the torture that was impressed on them and transform it into art collectors pay thousands, if not millions for. I have been in a spell of dark depression as of late and it prompted my removal from social media for sometime to embrace it, as if it’s a tunnel I am forced to travel through, until I can transmute my inner struggle and shout back at the light at the other end: You didn’t destroy me and you won’t. Sometimes, that is what the battle is: It’s a surrender and allowance of the darkness to fully invade oneself and allow it to teach you something, like a dark spirit that pops up in the canyon’s where very few human’s wander. It always has something to teach you, to warn you about and perhaps, teach you to confront another layer of fear within yourself before it will permit you to pass. I know the last few weeks have left me feeling timid in moments, and upon others, the confidence of strong, powerful recognition that depression is another sliver in the spectrum of life that can only further encourage to embrace this short, precious life we are given.

I’ve spent the last week immersed in something new, something inspired by the Hopi Artist Dan Namingha’s paintings. Upon my early arrival into Santa Fe, I recall walking into his gallery and I found a painting that has been imbedded in my memories since then. It was predominately black with a Kachina face in the darkness, or at least that is what my mind recalls. Our minds have a way of fibbin’ things into reality or distorting the memory at times. The intentional usage of fluorescent strokes is what also contrasted in a way that caused me to remember it. So, as I chose to stay inside my bubble of darkness of this last week, I made a decision to try something new. With podcasts about hypnotherapy, and lectures about the ancient Minoans of Crete, I began to weave. 4 panels later, all I could think about it…

Is how any of this beauty come come through the utter darkness I’ve been feeling. It’s a silent astonishment and testament to why I have not given up on my art. It’s that additional thread that interlocked itself to my DNA when I was born so instead of a double helix, I hold 3 strands. Something uniquely so beautiful about my soul, intrinsic with a level of devotion to the path of beauty in this lifetime that no matter how ugly the emotions I feel inside can fan themselves out, I will always hold a voice that knows how to translate the inner light into something even better.