I’ve always loved making art.
Though I can’t totally trace where it all started, I remember watching the “behind the scenes” of The Lion King on VHS as a kid, mesmerized by animators at their tilted desks painting these stunning pink desert landscapes and thinking that I wanted to create beautiful magical things like that one day.
Obviously, the first thing I got when I moved into my Chicago apartment last year was a desk that tilts. For a long time, I did not have cutlery and if someone came over we had to take turns drinking out of "the glass, singular" but I did have a desk that tilts.
Growing up, I didn’t exactly exude any kind of natural artist aptitude, but my art teacher taught me how to oil paint during my final year of high school and that was the start of a lifelong love affair with drawing and painting and just about any artistic medium you can imagine.
John Updike talks about art as something that offers "space" ~ breathing room for the spirit.
That's the best way I can describe the role art plays in my life... creating that space for myself.
For my 16-year-old self on a beach in Queensland, blasting Switchfoot and searching for God while making grand plans of what I thought my life would be like — plans that, in the end, unfurled, unfolded then combusted.
For my 23-year-old self, who threw everything into an art exhibition that was supposed to be a beginning but turned out to be an ending, marked with a spontaneous tattoo that was five times more painful to remove than to get in the first place.
For my 32-year-old self in a broken relationship, hearing the sound of the wheels of his suitcase drag across the floor and out the door, knowing it was all over.
But it’s not all heartbreak.
It’s a love letter to Chicago, the city that healed me.
For those moments of pure, borderline-ridiculous joy, walking around giggling to myself because I feel so happy.
It’s inspired by my brave and wonderful best friend who, for a decade, wrote me letters in the front pages of beautiful art books, reminding me of her unwavering belief in me.
She who never stopped believing that one day we would have our books on shelves and She who put them there.
It’s inspired by the two girls I moved in with when I was 27, broke from a stint in Europe, my personal Edgar Allan Poes, who know all the terrible things but loves me anyway.
For the great love of my life — you are my Sunday porch that I could do nothing on and feel like everything was happening.
For my family - my everything.
It’s inspired by all the books and the poems and the songs and the nights at my kitchen counter after a long day of work drawing into the night.
It's for the rushing wind and the deep hearts in the cheap seats and for
"raising a hand in the back of the world classroom, pulling the night sky down, staring stars in the face and reclaiming lost wishes" - D.Brown.
..and it's inspired by that waterfall I stood at the base of, as it misted my face, whispering truths I’ll never share because they're only mine, but desperately needed to be reminded of.
And it's for you.
Thank you for being here.
All my love,
Emmy
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