I have been crafting, painting drawing, and creating for as long as I can remember. Most of the time when I look at something I’ve just made all I can do is dissect it. My brain is attempting to be a perfectionist without putting in the work to make it “perfect”.
Sometimes I miss being a kid where I would repeatedly draw castles in the middle of a bright green field with silly mountains and an unproportionate tree next to it, and I was incredibly proud of them all. They didn’t make any sense and were certainly not perfect, but I didn’t care. I just knew I liked painting and Castles and that was enough for me to think they were epic.
I think my perspective started to shift when I took a hand at “realistic” acrylic paintings. Instead of making silly castles with lions behind bars and princesses with silly cone hats, I was trying to recreate something that I could actually compare it to.
Yet, I still love to paint scenery. Sunsets, skies, mountains, and oceans are beautiful and better than anything humans could ever imagine. So naturally I want to attempt to recreate it. Because it pushes my skills, it helps me understand colors and shapes. And I just like to look at them. So, although the results frustrate me most of the time, every once in a while, I paint something and am just like “Wow, I actually did that” (always surprised that I like it). And then it probably ends up going to my friend Yanna and I never look at it again.
The art I create that frustrates me the least has always been my abstract mandala things. I think it’s because I’m not playing the comparison game. It is pretty impossible to compare the random shapes and colors to the beauty of nature. But It’s also not as satisfying, I can look at them and go “neat”, but my random shapes never have any meaning behind them. They never remind me of good times, new experiences, or peaceful days. There is an emotional disconnect.
That is why I like my Evergreen Adventures style. It’s still connected to my favorite places and experiences, but that abstract element stops my brain from completely dissecting it because it doesn’t look exactly like the scene. And of course, I still analyze it and want to change things. But to what feels like a healthy degree because I still want to improve as an artist.
As frustrating as creating art can be I can’t see myself doing anything else. It’s how I remember life. All of my favorite pieces have been from my favorite places with awesome memories. I love to take photos and videos, but recreating a scene helps me really soak the memory in.
Also, I feel like I just have to. My brain is always analyzing things like if I move a brush this way, I could recreate that cloud pattern or if that scene has too much going a sticker design would get too muddled.
My brain does not turn off.
