While I wait to hear back on whether my piece made it into Manifest Gallery’s Inhabit juried show, I thought I’d share a bit more backstory on my drawing I submitted. The jury process isn’t over until sometime in July so I won’t have to wait that much longer. Fingers crossed!

The drawing I created ignited a spark and a new obsession with paint and ink I haven’t felt since college. For years I was feeling stagnant in my work and frankly, bored, with ink. Which is unfortunate because I’ve invested so much time and money into inks.

The theme for Inhabit is the idea of personal domains, a pretty open-ended theme. For me, my personal domain includes my physical as well as my mental space. This combination of physical and mental experiences has led me to the idea of living in a constant transformative state, for better or worse. This transformative state has another name, liminal space.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the concept of liminal space ( a blog post for another day) and how I’m traversing this space daily. I incorporated this idea into my drawing through symbolism. I used the coyote as a metaphor for my wild, rough-edged, foul-mouthed, and creative side while placing the creature in a more domestic setting, my living room. This space reflects my feelings of wanting to maintain my’wild’ side but also wanting to be more accommodating, tame, and responsible, I suppose.

For the painting process, I tried something new and decided on an unnatural color scheme, to fit with the more psychological thoughts behind the drawing. I focused on keeping the indoor area darker, while making the background lighter. I’ve always thought that the lighter colors were supposed to be front and center, with darker colors receding into the background. Well, not anymore!

I’ve also been focusing on creating more contrast with my ink work. I’ve been striving to be more bold with creating deep, dark ink areas, and preserving (being more mindful of, at least) white or lighter areas.

I’m taking risks in my work now! Stay tuned for more polychromatic paintings, and high contrast ink drawings!