It all begins with an idea right? Not in my case. I longed for that lightning bolt to hit me. The light bulb to turn on at any minute. No and no. It didn’t happen like that. So how did I end up with almost 200 sticks on the wall above for my MFA Thesis? I finally let go and trusted the process. What else could I do? Remember what Dory said in Finding Dory? “Just keep swimming” For me, it was “Just keep doing”.

I love painting and I love nature. I wanted to combine them together into something new. I spent most of my days outside in the parks with my daughter after preschool. While she was busy playing, I found an interest in all of the sticks on the ground. Free and abundant art materials and each one different! I started collecting them. Words like “What a great stick” became my vocabulary and I turned into a stick hunter, stopping my car on the side of the road with my sister- in- law to grab a fallen branch (she made me do the u-turn so I wouldn’t miss the opportunity).

Did I know what I was going to do with all the sticks? No. The collecting process just felt right.

Meanwhile, as a painter, I started painting abstract work, completely going away from my normal realistic and representational styles. I guess the more I got in touch with nature the more I wanted to let go with my painting practice (I also didn’t have a clue what I wanted to paint). I turned to automatism painting and it felt great.

Amidst the painting and collecting, I was also interested in deconstructing my art. I would make something and then break it apart and recombine it in new ways. This alchemical process gave me a better understanding of what I was doing and why. So to keep with the tradition I had developed, I cut up all of my automatic paintings to see what I could find out about myself. The sticks and branches were already deconstructed by nature and ready to go.

There I was, in the middle of a pile of sticks and a pile of painting strips. What now? As I thought about what to do, I noticed my fingers wrapping a painting strip around a stick. I liked how it looked and decided to follow that process. There I was, making these automatic sculptural stick paintings, one after another, each one different. I enjoyed the process and materiality so much. After speaking with one of my professors, I discovered that the work wasn’t about the Why, but about the How…the collecting, the painting, the deconstructing…the processes.

Sitting in front of the wall with all of my sticks was a zen moment. Impermanence, versatility, balance, intuition, nature, surrender, trust.