Making art inspires new stories and places to remember
'Changing Landscapes' are here: five new completed paintings with their own stories are making me happy today.
Hello friends, I hope your week is going well for you. This year has felt to me like it’s been taking its time opening up, but it finally feels like a few things are getting grounded and falling into place.
My happy news for the week: I finished five new wood panel paintings, many of which I posted about last week as works in progress. The work-in-progress paid off and they’re done, titled and storied and all loaded up into my online shop.
In this week’s article, I’m posting some of the completed pieces, along with their stories.
Read on for my latest article.
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Thank you for being here, I always appreciate you for showing up.
Love, Kris
Changing Landscapes
Sometimes a whole new collection of images show up together, one after another.
This new group of paintings started showing up in December, about a month before the fires in Los Angeles. I was nearly done painting these when those horrific fires started earlier this month. As I was painting, they started reminding me of the landscapes out west. I lived in L.A. and Glendale from 2006-2021, and loved those big skies and amazing colors, but hadn’t thought of them as my subject matter for a long time. When I lived there I made a lot of abstract landscapes, but not many since.
I wasn’t trying to paint landscapes, but they showed up anyway, as imagery does at times. My subconscious must have been working away on these, because they popped up rather quickly at the start.
Here are the new paintings, and the very short stories I wrote about each.
‘Changing Landscapes’ is the name of this painting, and of the whole series. It has a story:
Everywhere we look, the landscapes on earth are changing. Not just seasonally, but in a bigger way. We are collectively learning the lessons of impermanence, and it’s not always an easy lesson.
The earth is constantly in movement, with new landscapes appearing daily. Every one of these landscapes started within us. The changing earth is reflecting what we are waking up to knowing, and we are reflecting the earth’s changes back again.
The end of a year has a way of bringing up memories, from this lifetime and others. I was already in my end of year joy, nostalgia, grief, and releasing, and then these paintings appeared, as if to say hello. So many memories came along for the ride.
‘Memory Valley’ is the name of this piece, and its story goes like this.
We drove through valley and up over hill after hill, wandering through a landscape so unusual to our eyes. I could feel this place in my body, it seemed familiar, yet I was new here. Or was I? Was this sense memory somehow triggering another life in another time, in a different body? I could imagine the smells and sounds of that other faraway day, they were real. A grief came up too - what to do with this feeling of missing something I’d never had?
Sometimes a funny little character appears, some being from some place. This being showed up at the start of the series, in fact, they appeared before the other paintings, and may have led the way for them.
’The Fire Within’ was the painting that got this whole new series started. It has a story.
The old cycle slowed to a crawl, and then it was done. All movement stopped, stillness and trust were the order of the day. Everything stood still, waiting for the light to return and a new cycle to begin.
Guided by the cosmos and the earth, we waited until it was time for the fires within to rekindle. This time of hibernation was needed before the next time of new growth.
Then there was ‘Dreamscape’, and it too came with a story.
My dreamscape is mine alone, a private space I visit when I want to be by myself. Releasing the cares of opinions, demands, and fears of others, I give myself the time to be in my beautiful dreamscape. The colors are perfect, always shifting just a bit here and there. My dreamscape changes, as do I.
‘The Lavender Distance’ is one of my favorites of this group. I want to go there.
Somewhere in the lavender distance, gold flowers grow, standing all in a row across the horizon. They glow so brightly, they beckon me to come and talk to them. I’ve had lots of experience talking to flowers before, but usually they’re not so insistent on an audience as these are. I’ll get back to you once I find out what they wanted to say.
Inspiration for the week
Besides being an abstract artist, I’m also a psychic and meditation teacher. Practicing meditation and learning how to turn on and work with my own psychic abilities makes a world of difference for me in my art making space.
I teach drop-in meditation sessions online, and today the session is FREE to join! This is a 45 minute guided live meditation session, suitable for all levels of meditation experience. It starts at 11:00am PST / 2:00pm EST.
Register below to receive the Zoom link to join in.
Thank you for reading!
Thank you for being here, and please do share with anyone you know who would enjoy my work. Cheers to you! Love, Kris