u/auniakahn

In our lifetime, each of us goes through cycles of new beginnings. Sometimes they are exciting and we just can't wait, and other times they can be sad, upsetting, unexpected and not what we had hoped for. The seasons of life bring us these beginnings and endings over the course of our life, and we must adapt to these changes. However, there is always a guardian, something special watching over you as you walk through each of the doors of the beginnings you hoped for or the endings you wish had never come. You are always protected as you move through each chapter of your life.

Medium: Gouache, acrylic, oil pastel, colored pencil, and gold ink
Size: 9 in x 12 in
Frame: Walnut Frame 10 in x 13 in

For most of my career, I rarely used red. The avoidance of red was intentional.

In my early teens, my stepfather told me, when I was buying my first car, to avoid red cars because he'd had a dream about someone dying in one. I was young, dumb and purchased a red car anyhow (I will do what I want ). I was in a severe car accident in my 1991 red Escort and totaled the car but I escaped without a scratch. The accident wasn't my fault.

After that, I spent a lot more time listening, both to the people I cared about and to my own intuition.

Over the 20 years of my undiagnosed illness, red was the color of emergency room visits, hospital stays, ambulance rides, and unexpected emergencies and instability. I had heart issue from the inception and I saw more blood than I ever wanted to. I avoided red cars, red clothing, red pens, and I think (I know) I became almost obsessive about avoiding anything red, especially when I wasn't feeling my best. It just felt dangerous. We all know color theory shows us that reds create anxiety, urgency, and emergency, and can feel very jarring.

When I became medically stable red started calling to me in my art. Honestly, I didn't even notice it happening until it had already arrived and become one of the anchors of my work. Like most of what I make, I don't really think about it until a piece is finished, so it wasn't until I'd made a handful of paintings that I looked back and realized how much red I'd let in, after avoiding it for so long.

It's strange how something I avoided and obsessed about for decades faded away so quickly. The lifeblood in my own body started to feel like a deep and powerful lifeline instead of a dangerous warning.

Red is the color of passion, life, and energy. It lit a fire in me that had been barely a flickering match, fighting against everything my illness tried to put out, and now it's a blazing fire.

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It is strange how much medical issues and trauma can color and change so many parts of life and how we live day to day.

The Crow Swallowed the House Whole 🐦‍⬛ ❤️ 🏡 So the Wind Could Never Find It

Acrylic, Gouache, Oil Pastel, and Colored Pencil
8 × 10 in / 20.3 × 25.4 cm (Framed: 11 × 14 in)

A house is like your body, mind, and soul. There will always be wind, rain, and trouble in the atmosphere, but there will also be sunny, beautiful, and magical days. However, we must protect our home, our body, our mind, and our spirit from the winds. That does not mean they don't come. It does not mean they don't touch the house or your life, but it means you are generally protected overall, and when that stuff hits, the power in it is much less. You can handle it and keep going.

It is all about perspective. If we can find ways to be okay with the challenges of life, learn from them, and understand that they will always come, even when everything is good and perfect, we can weather these storms. Sometimes we need a friend, like the crow, to help us do so. We don't have to go at it alone.

As an artist, I find storytelling 😍 imperative to my work.

When I started out over 20 years ago, I found my voice. Yet, after 10 years as a professional artist and the love ❤️ and hate 🤬 relationship with the algorithm and follower and like counts, the work started to lose meaning. It became about technicality, likability, and visibility.

For the last few years of my career, the meaning was not there. I tried chasing meaning, chasing story and my voice because I knew it was in there (somewhere) 🧐 and I wanted to get back to that core part of being creative. The more I chased, the farther away from me it got.

I felt disconnected from my work and, to be frank, it felt soulless. 😢 I had lost myself.

The more I reached for what I wanted as a creator (and experimented), the more rejection I received. So I kept returning to the familiar work, the kind that got me the exhibitions, the support, the likes. 😞 What a terrible way to live, feeling trapped in such a noxious cycle.

I had gone back and forth so many times, lighting a little match 🔥 each time to burn down what came before and just do what I loved, only to blow it out and run back to the safety of what everyone knew and liked. This went on for a few years.

Finally, I just let it all burn 🔥 and walked away.

I removed the old work from my website and social media. The followers kept dropping. I lost almost all my Patrons on Patreon, so I shut it down. Most of my collectors left and never came back.

But as everything burned down, it only lit the way forward. 💫 What I learned is that even if no one ever cared about my work again, I was finally happy. ❤️‍🔥 And that was all that mattered.

It is not an easy lesson, and you have to really mean 🤩 it when you burn it all down. You have to really let go. You can't be half in and half out, holding the fire 🚒 extinguisher.

Burn 🔥it all down.

Resist the urge to bring water 🌊to the fire.

You have to fan the flames 🔥eagerly so the light is so bright you have to walk the path in front of you. You have no choice.

There is no going back.

Heritage as Survival

20 years in the art world teaches you numerous things. 🧐 The two that changed everything for me: your roots 🍃 are yours whether you claim them or not, and your artistic 🎨 voice is a living document.

For most of my career, traditional materials could have killed me. 💀 Digital was never my preference, it was my only option. Losing the use of traditional mediums also removed my natural instincts with play, mark making, and physical media itself. I did not have the ability to naturally explore my artistic voice.

A proper diagnosis and medications ❤️ changed that a few years ago. When I started using traditional mediums again after almost 2 decades, I tried to replicate my digital work. Replication was a killer of my voice. The therapy, escape, and joy all went quiet.

Unsatisfied, I start thinking deeply about who I was, what I wanted to create and more importantly my roots.

My roots always were elusive and disconnected to me. Growing up in a very violent home and learning when I was 15 that was adopted and lied to for so many years was crushing. Heritage felt like something to escape and hope to survive rather than carry.

Then I started looking at the present. 😍🏠 My home is a maximalist cathedral, every wall and shelf filled with art, color, pattern and objects with meaning. The way I dress, the way I live, everything layered and symbolic and intensely mine. So why wasn't my art?

It clicked, it was always there but I spent the better part of my life rejecting it. So I dug out a box of photographs 📸 I hadn't looked at since my mother died in 2013. I already knew the answer the moment I asked the question.

I found the image I was looking for and it was everything. 🤩 I was sitting at a bright green children's art desk, sewing something I can no longer remember. Horrible wood paneling as my backdrop to the elegant lamp shade, aloe vera plant, gaudy candy dish, Polish tapestry and the brightly blue 💙 flowered chairs that I loved.

When I looked at this image it clicked, my roots and voice have been there all along. I just had to return to meet them and plant 🌿 them in healthier, more fertile soil.

I am the gardener of my roots.

Who were you before you were asked to make yourself smaller?

The thing about suppression is that it is not the same as disappearance and you did not lose those parts of yourself. They waited in the dark and learned patience while you gained the strength and courage to reach inside and liberate yourself - every bit of who you were down to your bones.

You have everything you need in every breath you take. You were always fire waiting for you to finally exhale and light everything 🔥 ablaze.

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Everything Starved Of Air Came Back Breathing Fire
Acrylic, Gouache, Colored Pencil, and Gold Ink on Panel
12 x 16 in / 30.48 x 40.64 cm

It is interesting how we are often placed in a box. Often by society, but sometimes by ourself.

We are often placed inside a box with four sides, a tight top, and a flat and uninteresting bottom. Sometimes we do not know we are in there, almost trapped.

Overall, as human beings we are not box-able.

We are very complex, nuanced creatures.

However, over time we might gravitate toward one thing or another and start to fear moving outside the walls and borders of that box. But the truth is that we only grow, we only move forward, we only find what we are looking for when we are willing to tear the walls down and feel vulnerable.

Don't let anyone ask you to choose between the various pieces of yourself, to simplify, to leave the stranger and wilder parts of yourself at the door.

Remember, you were always exactly the right amount of everything.

You are not box-able.

_____
'The Holy Act Of Refusing To Be Only One Thing'
Gouache, acrylic, and color pencil, 11x14"
Showing at Thinkspace Gallery.