Creating art is a weird thing for me. Originally I was going to go to college for art, but changed my major last minute to Business/Accounting. Three years into college, I changed back to art. After college, I wasn’t sure what to do with my degree… Do I go to grad school? Do I become a professor? Do I want to illustrate children’s books? Do I want to be a professional freelance illustrator? Do I want to be a graphic designer? Do I want to keep doing pro bono graphic design without any experience? Do I want to sell art? Do I want to make money off of my own art? What is art to me?

After several years (6 to be precise), I’ve realized a few things:

  1. I don’t like making art for other people. Art is therapy for me. It helps me process.
  2. I am not good at keeping deadlines for my art, aka I am not good at making art for other people.
  3. I am totally enthused if people want to buy art I have already created. Many things contribute to my happiness and money is the gateway to a lot of those things.

Basically, I will never make money off of my art, and I am okay with that. I am good at other things that I can do for day jobs (and I still very much enjoy doing IT help desk work!).

And now more than ever I am creating art in leaps and bounds! I think this is because I finally have a job that doesn’t stress me out (and as an introvert, working remotely means that I am fully charged at the end of a work day!), I make enough money to live comfortably (for now #rent #…mortgage???), and I’m eating better and exercising regularly. In general, I have cut a lot of stressors out of my life (privileged enough to do so) and it feels great.

Now I am stressed, but in a positive way, because I’ve got 50+ lanterns and a bunch of other pieces to finish before the Verge Studio Art Tour on September 8-9!!! The piece I’m most excited to show is an altar to God Girl, but you have to get kind of pummeled by 70+ lanterns with a variety of images and messages on them to get to it (and to get out). I pray to GOD GIRL that I’ll see you there!

p.s. I’m still working on being good about updating my website with actual new images lol