Decolonizing Painting

I’ve always been intimidated by drawing and painting aside from when I was a kid.  It just seemed like something that you had to study and have an eye for.  It seemed to come with a set of hard set rules laid down by academia and classical artists and snooty people.  And all that rigidity turned me off to it.  It’s funny how a little butterfly effect can set your mind spinning down a path without realizing how far from reality it’s gone.  I don’t know what exactly made me think that that’s what drawing and painting is, why I think of rich people drinking white wine in a big white room that all you hear are the whispers of critiques and clinking of expensive shoes on polished floors…actually, now that I’m thinking on it - I know exactly when and where and how I got turned off to it - the horribly institutionalized private school - epitome of colonized America - that I was sent to until I started in on the drugs to escape it.  But beyond that, perhaps it was all rooted in some subconscious need to be perfect - or fit in - which was never going to happen - not at Episcopal School of Dallas, anyways.  But thanks to the drugs, rebelling, and depression that worked like an armor around my artistic spirit - I managed to preserve most of it - though it was still limited inside the walls of my own protection.  Working with fiber and making bracelets - there weren’t rules at all or any mold to fit into or expectations - so it was easy mentally and spiritually to create.  No pressure.

But since this grade 6 Richter scale life shift has freed me from the prison of being any sort of perfect or fitting in - after having all the humanness erupt completely and messily throughout every crevice of my life - and feeling completely psychologically liberated from myself and others’ expectations by this explosion - it has also freed me into this infinite new wide space to imagine, explore, and create.  As I am reclaiming my full range of emotions that have been driven out of me by this objectifying society, I am also reclaiming my whole entire spirit, and with it, my whole entire freedom to art.  Now, if I want to paint, I’m going to fucking paint.