A Creative Rebirth
In late 2009 I emerged from an eight year hiatus from making art. Durning that period I was working as a video game artist at a big corporation, so I was being creative but as for my personal art, I produced not a single sketch for all those years. Nothing. I sold my easel and got rid of all my art supplies cold turkey.
Why would I do that you ask? There’s a few reasons I think. Primarily I was feeling deeply frustrated by my relationship to my creative muse. I was not well. I had no idea who I was, I lacked even a shred of confidence, and I was dysfunctionally shy and couldn’t share my work with people. But the biggest block to my creativity was that I didn’t have anything to say.
Oh, I guess to be fair I was saying something. The art from those years was strange and grotesque. It was symbolic of my inner struggle, which I was unaware of. A red flag of sorts. That art wasn’t skillfully done either or it may have been worth saving. I mean, there’s a lot of grotesque art that endures. Mine however was just poorly executed and unintentionally silly.
After my first art show ever, at a tiny goth cafe in Seattle, which no one came to, I decided to throw in the towel. I think that show had such a disastrous effect on me because I was already so void of self confidence in myself and my work that a small event like that felt huge. No one cared. What’s the point. My art sucks, and other comments like these were frolicking through my mind.
And so I quit.
I don’t remember if that decision to quit felt final. I think at the time I was just thinking that I’d take a break and maybe some day come back to it if I felt the call.
A lot of that early art was thrown in the trash or burned. Some was saved, taken off the stretcher bars and rolled up and stored. I don’t know why I saved it. I guess it’s fun to have a record of it, and now, many years later it’s interesting to compare that art to what I’m doing now. The primary difference that I see is how much my internal landscape has improved. My art has always been a spiritual practice and most of my work reads as self portraits even though I may not be literally in the painting.
Years past and I continued to work in the computer game business making background art, small animations and even some narrative design. I switched from one company I had been with for nine years to a new smaller company. That was a hugely refreshing move and what’s notable about that switch is that I remember the moment when I realized that I was unhappy and needed to leave by my own will, and not just wait for the axe to fall. It was a move that at the time was uncharacteristic; I saw that I needed a change and I made it happen. Interesting. Maybe that was the beginning of my awakening.
“Hungry Earth”
When I started to feel the creative spark reignite within me it was 2009. I remember I had been writing a lot and I was diving deep into the symbolism of trees. I got so excited about it that I remember sketching a small doodle of a tree of life, with a torus energy field moving around it. The tree drops its leaves and they become nutrients for the next season. It’s one example of how nature digests itself in order to renew its energies. The ouroboros is a common symbol that illustrates this concept. Or, a snake stealing the eggs from a birds nest thus killing one thing so that another may live. This is life. The destructive rage of a volcano that seems to destroy an entire ecosystem as we saw in Washington state in 1980 when Mount Saint Helens erupted. It’s nothing personal, it’s just part of the process of renewal.
I was floored. Nature is so cool! I started going to the parks around Seattle and sketching trees. I was especially in love with roots. Hummmm, it’s very interesting looking back. How symbolic it all can be. In the process of my creative awakening I was laying down new roots, although I was unaware of it at the time. I had uncovered a buried thread in me that I was deeply connected to and now that I was aware of it I foresaw a lifetime of inspiration in this message. The circle of life and death in nature. The oneness of it all. What is death but a necessity for the continued existence of life!
“Roots and Branches” - 2009 - 8x10”
After awhile I decided I needed to start painting again. I broke out the oil paints and grabbed a small 8x10” wood panel and started working from a little drawing I had made of a floating tree. Being a small work, you would think I would have busted it out in a couple days. The weeks went on and I worked on it off and on. I’d get frustrated and put it away for awhile and then start again.
I remember making a kind of pact with myself. If I was going to start painting again I was going to do it right. I’d focus and work hard to make something that was honest to my voice, thoughtful and as well-made as I was capable of. I wanted to tell a particular story and I wanted it to be good.
I think that little floating tree which I titled “Roots and Branches” took a good six months to finish. I was rusty and still unconfident and afraid of the process, but I got it done and moved on.
What came next was a painting I ended up calling Atomic Tree. As I was drawing trees and geeking out on their symbolism, I started to look for new ways to show their meaning and importance. It occurred to me that an atomic blast and a tree were quite similar in structure. How interesting it would be to overlap these two things, a symbol of death and a symbol of life. An atomic tree.
Atomic Tree Drawing - 2010
I drew the first incarnation of the tree in a sketchbook. It was from the ground up with no roots and it looked okay that way but I brought the sketch into photoshop and started playing around with it, painting over the drawing trying to establish the color and mood of the piece. As I said earlier I was really into roots at the time and suddenly a voice that may or may not have been my own asked, “but what do the roots of an atomic tree look like?” Hummm, that’s a damn good question! I extended the canvas down quite a ways and filled it with black. I sat back for all of about ten seconds and then with a wide pure white brush I made stroke down the center of the piece from just under ground level and off the bottom of the page. OMG, that f**king works! I sort of gasped when I felt the power of that moment hit me. I think in that moment the deeper meaning of the painting showed itself. I was painting the tree of life at its moment of inception. It was the instantaneous birth of a creative idea. Like the light bulb going off above a cartoon character when they’ve suddenly figured it all out. AH-HA!!
Atomic Tree - Digital color study
After finishing a color study of Atomic Tree in Photoshop I printed it out to use as reference and then started to create a version of it on a large canvas that I had made myself. Like that little floating tree, I struggled to get it right. I worked on it for 6 months, then a year. I struggled to find the right color and texture for the canopy and must have repainted the same area several times trying to get it right. I would turn it towards the wall and take it out a month later, make some little brushstrokes here or there and then turn it back again. I was working in a little corner of my kitchen and when I got a cat I worried that he might get into the paint or his hair would embed itself in the painting.
In 2011, two years later, I had stopped working on it altogether and I was on to other paintings but yet I didn’t consider Atomic Tree done. By then I was in the process of rebuilding my whole life. I had ended a ten year relationship, and had just quit my game artist career of 17 years, planning to never return. Oh, and I had stopped paying the mortgage on the condo I owned in Seattle. I was putting everything into storage and was going to travel for awhile and do some soul searching. Call it a reboot, or a mid life crisis. Whatever was happening, it was powerful.
Atomic Tree went into storage and I planned to return to it at some point and make it right, but two and half years later when I was back in an apartment in Seattle I pulled it out and I couldn’t find anything I wanted to change about it. It had magically been completed! Actually, I was just seeing the painting differently now.
“Atomic Tree” - Oil on linen - 2011
What had changed? Well, for one thing my spirit quest was proving to be quite enriching. I was now well on my way to establishing a kind of self love and confidence that had eluded me my whole life. I think for this reason I was seeing my work a little differently perhaps. But also, as any artist knows, a little distance from your work brings clarity and with fresh eyes I was seeing my Atomic Tree painting as not only complete, but good. It was the best painting I had ever made up to that point. It was honest, and bold and powerful. It resonated with symbolism and could have multiple meanings. Above all, it was a self portrait which perfectly captured the exact moment when I had suddenly awaken from a very long slumber.
BAM!!