On making art in a new way for the first time

12 paintings that mean a lot to me

As a writer and an artist, I spent a lot of my life thriving inside of the tension that Mormonism provided for me. There is so much to say when there is pushback against something specific. There is nuance to be unveiled and surprised by when I was working inside very specific parameters and beliefs. There was always a path leading to the otherworld to explain the unexplainable. I could use God as a stand-in for so much.

This isn’t to say that what I wrote and created as an active and progressive Mormon isn’t valuable to me. It in many ways paved the pathway back to myself in a way that prompted me to leave when the time was right.

I did, however, find myself on the other side of religion wondering if I actually had anything to say. I felt a little bit like I was floundering when I wasn’t writing and creating with the purpose of some how making sense of Mormonism and helping others to do the same. All my life I had been taught that any of my “talents and gifts” would be for the purpose of bringing people to Christ and it was disorienting to create without that motto as a Northstar.

I had somehow excelled at finding the beauty in nuance inside of religion, and I was comfortable there. It was comforting to attribute so much to the ether, to what could not be explained in this life.

For some years after leaving the church, I still dedicated a lot of my creative space to my religious life (hence this substack), except in this time, it was more about how to life outside of Mormonism. I am so happy that I’ve dedicated time to this process in my creative life. It’s been so helpful to get clear on my experiences and feelings, but I’ve also known that I don’t want all of my creative energy to be invested in post Mormon spaces forever.

A year ago I was invited to have a solo show at the new Orem Library gallery. Up to this point, I’d only made fairly small paintings, so I was a little nervous. I stretched large pieces of canvas across stretcher bars that a dear friend had found on the side of the road and got to work.

I had no idea what I was painting about, what this show would become, but I just kept making a mess. The paintings became an obsession (as most creative projects do at some point), and I spent hours with them. I wrote lyrics to songs across the canvases, as if I were in high school again. I spent hours painting beast like characters holding hands with children. I painted over so much. I felt fear about not knowing what any of this was even about, but still feeling driven to be there doing it.

My studio is a room in our basement, once inhabited by the ghost of a woman named Darcy, who died in her 20’s there. Darcy was abused by a bishop as a teen, and then mistreated by her mother, who, instead of giving her a bedroom in one of the two upstairs rooms, housed her doll collection there. I’ve since learned from neighbors, that both Darcy and her mother had deep mental health issues. Her ghost seemed to live there in that basement room for the first few years we lived here. We didn’t enter the room with bright red shag carpet, dark paneled walls, a popcorn ceiling, and a tiny window letting in the littlest bit of light. Anyone who opened the door shivered upon entering and would asked, “what is down here?” When we bought the house, the first thing we did was rip out everything, replace the window with a much larger one, re-paint the walls, re-do the ceiling. When we took out the old desk, I found the Young Women in Excellence packet with her name scrawled across the front.

For the most part, I am a skeptic of the mystical, a believer unto reason and logic, but one night, some friends and I gathered downstairs and sang to her, with her? We let her know she no longer needed to stay in this room alone, but that she was welcome to move on. We guided her with candlelight into a snowstorm outside and let her know that the pink sky was hers. A few weeks later, I was visiting the graves of my grandparents at a nearby cemetery and thought I’d see if by chance I could find Darcy’s grave. I walked to a corner of the cemetery, near some trees, and there she was, her name engraved into the stone at my feet. I’ve always had the sense since then that she really just wanted to be included, wanted friendship, and so every once in a while, I invite her back to the room where I paint.

I don’t think she stays long any more, but maybe she was there sometimes as I painted. Her presence or spirit seems so much better now—unfettered.

The paintings evolved for months and because the studio is small, I never saw more than two paintings next to each other at a time. I worried about the story they would tell together. Would they simply be a bunch of misfits hanging next to each other?

This was the first time though, since leaving the church, that I had embarked on a project that felt absence of the weight of my experience either in or out of the church. Of course, it will always be a part of my story, but in these paintings, it wasn’t the story. I owed nothing to my Mormonism, or ex-Mormonism and the space that allowed me was exhilarating.

When I hung the show on the giant white walls of the gallery, with the sunlight pouring in from the high windows, I realized that I had indeed been telling a cohesive story, even if only to myself. I felt relief and pride in knowing that I certainly did have creative stamina and ideas that reach far beyond religion, and were still rooted in who I’ve always been.

I don’t really care if the paintings are labeled as “good” or “successful” because the making of them was the creation of life in this moment and time for me. It was proof to myself that I am standing after and outside of religion. It was proof that my capacity for spiritual thought and awe was not encapsulated in religion or in my reaction to leaving that religion. What I love about painting is that it is a world of one person speaking to the world of another. We get to delight, disagree, wonder, and put our own ideas on the piece in front of us. There is no wrong or right way to see and interpret the work.

The show is up at the Orem Library until the 31st of August if you want to see them in person.

I’ll leave the paintings here as well. The thing I really want to say here, and the reason for sharing them is to let you know that you too are so much more than what Mormonism told you you were capable of. The church and your leaving of it will not always affect your ability to know and love the world. You have so much to say and explore that has nothing to do with your Mormon experience, and I hope that feels hopeful.

Below are the paintings that are in the show that were made over the course of the last year. This show feels good to me because it is the first time I’ve created work that is not related directly to religion. It feels nice to not give the church any air in the room.

“Stay-At-Home-Mom”, 24x30 inches

“Her Motherhood Belonged to No Institution” 28x36 inches

“Tell Me Your Stories” 24x30 inches

“‘Mom?’ ‘I’m here’”, 16x20 inches

“I Used to Sit in My Grandma’s Garden. My Hands are Turning Soft like Hers”, 30x24 inches

“The Valley Where I am From is Full of Howling Wolves and Rainbows” 24x30 inches

”She Did What She Had to Do” 30x24 inches

“She Took Care of Things” 30x40 inches

“They Kept Going, Even When Monsters Watched Them”, 36x28 inches

“So Many Futures, But Only One Seemed the Right Option” 24x30 inches

“‘Watch Me’, ‘I am’” 12x24 inches

“And Sometimes, Everything Felt Right”, 24x30 inches

If you are interested in purchasing any of these paintings, the available ones can be found here.

If you’d like to purchase a hard copy of ‘Letters to a Leaving Mormon’, you can find it here.