On my most recent Art Show

#1 in a series

It’s days like today that I feel the weight of this painting. This particular piece, one of 12 in a series, is titled, “So Many Futures, But Only One Seemed the Right Option”. It’s about the time of summer where I really question what I am doing with myself. I can’t believe how much my bed calls to me during the day. There is still the vestiges of productivity equaling value that not only Mormonism, but capitalism instilled in me. It’s a wrestle everyday to rest. To allow rest when my husband is at work. I’m not depressed, but maybe listless? A summer listlessness that ticks the hot summer days away. I think in part, it is the fear of being interrupted, because I know I will be interrupted, that stops me from really diving into projects.

I’ve been away from Mormonism officially for about 6 years, and wanted to long before that, so these paintings at this point don't feel like a reaction to Mormonism, but rather, an acknowledgment of Mormonisms influence in the first four decades of my life.

When I made this painting, I was thinking a lot about the three white dresses I heard talked about in so much of my childhood as a girl in the church. Blessing, baptism and wedding. I thought so much about getting into buildings, the temple, the church, a home as a mom.

I don’t really want to give more air than I need to the things that are problematic, and the downright little care and thought that was given to my interests and future in that space, but needless to say, I’ve thought a lot about it.

Even now, long down the road from my fervent Mormon dedication, I am still untangling my place in the world. As I painted, I thought about the way women were placed like players on a board, given their next move by authorities.

We know all this. It isn’t news to anyone who has done some deconstruction. I’m also not settled to simply let my narrative be one of victimhood, because it certainly is not, even when choices I made as a Mormon shape my life today.

This painting started out as something very different. Underneath these layers are a wolf-like mother and father sitting on wooden chairs, each holding a child. I spent hours painting these figures, and actually, I loved them, but the thing about a painting and a poem is that you aren’t finished until you are surprised by yourself. So I kept going and painted over everything.

I still don’t have a particular narrative or meaning to each painting, I just know what was present as I worked. It is an interesting thing to eschew an entire system that gave me an understanding of the world, and then still have a life that is much in part a result of that system. I don’t have a clear delineation on the good and the bad, and in large part, I hardly agree with those simplistic ways of parsing out a life, so that complicated nexus is definitely living with me as I paint.

My life, honestly, is everything I could have ever asked for and dreamed up. I see the privilege in that. I wouldn’t change it. and yet, there are days like today where I am not totally sure how to explain to my children what their mother does beyond the work they see me do in the domestic space. I’m sometimes not sure how to convey to them that everyday I am thinking about big and hard topics that are relevant to both me and to them.

For me, the title of this painting, ‘So Many Futures, But Only One Seemed the Right Option’ is about the way so many of us did not step aside from the given path to question anything about ourselves at all when we decided our lives. I know I would I would wonder about my other lives no matter what path I had taken, and I am truly lucky to be pretty in love with this one, but that doesn’t mean it was okay to have been so mentally stripped of options. I think of the many women before me and around me who are deeply in love with their lives, or aspects of their lives, and how brave that it to love what simply comes to you.

I am here because women were brave, because some loved their lives, and some spent their lives wishing for something else. I love to hear my daughters talk about their futures. The possibilities seem wide. Their ideas change and most of all, the are remaining wild with what that means.

Some paintings from the show have sold, but the ones that remain are available in my shop here.

The show is up at the Orem Library until August 31st.