one year later

A year (+ 1 day) ago, I had my first gallery experience. A solo show at a gallery I have walked through countless times during the Pioneer Square Art Walk. I’ve attended that art walk with varying levels of regularity since 2018 and it holds such a deeply special spot in my heart. As we’ve hit the one year anniversary of my first solo show, I am reflecting on the experience, my feelings around it, and all that I’ve learned since. I’m so unbelievably grateful to have had the experience I did. 

To lay out context, I am friends with the curator, Brian, aka B, aka BLINEDOT. We’ve known each other since 2015 when I was just starting to take college level painting classes and he’s seen me grow and change in just about every way over the 10+ years we’ve been friends. In May 2024, Brian called me and asked if I’d ever be interested in having a solo show at Axis and I immediately said yes. I knew I would need significant time to get everything in order, I had just started a new full time job, I was in the midst of wedding planning, and had multiple family visits coming up. I asked for a year. 

I started planning in late July, and bought and prepped canvases in August. I then completely changed my typical schedule. I started waking up at 5am every weekday and painting before work. Just one hour every morning, in my sweats, coffee, no music, just me and the paint and the quiet mornings with my dog. I spent almost 9 months with this routine, a few days off here and there, but a lot of consistency. If I didn’t have a partner who supported this process, it wouldn’t have worked, I wouldn't have finished everything in time. 

I think my brain keeps circling back to the amount of privilege in this scenario, to have a friend who is a curator, to have a partner who takes on extra so I can disappear to the studio, to have a job that was flexible when I needed to leave work early the day the show opened in April. There’s immense layers of privilege and while it’s important to see and acknowledge, I also see and acknowledge that I had to do the hard part. 

I had to create art that I was proud of, in sizes that scared me. I had never worked so large before. I had never painted that many pieces as one cohesive set. I had to plan it out months in advance so that I could make it attainable. And I was still scrambling at the end as I was finishing the series while packing up our apartment to move the weekend before the show. It feels like such a blur to think back on it. I’m not sure how I did it, how I pulled through and got to the gallery and saw everything on the walls. It’s through the support; the partner and friends and loved ones who cheered me on when I was so tired, the friend who drove a U-Haul full of paintings for me because I was too nervous and needed help, the friend who played live music in the middle of the gallery to accent the theme, the coworkers who showed grace and love when I came in late or left early to paint. 

It was the community. It’s always the community. And isn’t that the whole point? The entire show was about community, about love, about wishing someone you loved could see what you were seeing. These Views Made Me Think of You. A title born out of a real text I received when my sister sent me 20 photos she didn’t know would become reference photos, she just wanted to share. She wanted me to know that she saw something beautiful, something breathtaking, and she thought of me. 

I still wonder if the people who came to the gallery understood that feeling, that connective tissue of it all. I still wonder if they felt the love of my friends and family coming forth from each brush stroke and each title. I wonder if they knew that in looking at my art, engaging with it, talking to each other about it, they were looking directly at my soul. I sometimes doubt if landscape painting can portray the deep emotions of my being the way other painting styles do for other artists. The abstract and the portrait painters discuss emotion with such gravitas that I hope viewers see in the curve of a wave, the strength of a mountain peak, the blur of a cloud. I hope they know they’re not just seeing something pretty, but something with heart and meaning and memory.

I think they know, at least a little bit. Because when I was walking around the gallery on opening night, I was eavesdropping whenever I could, listening in to what people were saying about my work, engaging in whatever ways I could as people were willing. I think a few people understood, they saw the vision. Now, a year later, I still hold it so close to my heart, the way that experience shaped me is vast. 

Occasionally, the imposter syndrome hits. I didn’t sell many pieces, just a few smaller ones. I doubt the strength of my work, I sometimes wonder if I was just taking up space because of the privilege of my friendship with Brian. I sometimes wonder if I didn’t deserve it. I wonder if people didn’t feel connected and that is why I had low sales. I’ve been to a lot of art walks, and seen much worse art sell for much more money. I won’t pretend I understand the mindset of collectors. But I’d like to think I understand a little bit of the heartbeat of Seattle, my home of 12 years. I know people liked my art, and I don’t doubt that I have skill, but every now and then, if I’m being honest, I wonder if my work fits, or where it ought to find a home. 

The insecurities come up easily when people ask well meaning questions about how the gallery experience was. They ask about sales and I think of the people I've known throughout my life who say that art won’t make you any money, that you’ll be a starving artist. I’ve fought this stereotype as much as I can, but as I look at my sales numbers, I also see the reality of low sales, low income, needing a secondary source of income through full time work. I doubt myself often in this space, wondering if I have what it takes to be a successful artist, wondering if that’s what I want. 

And I think for now the answer is fluid. 

I want to pursue art for as long as possible, with as much of my time as I can offer, and as much of my heart as I have. And at the same time, I want stability. I want consistency in ways that you don’t typically get as an artist. I don’t have enough savings or a wealthy partner, I can’t quit my day job and find out what being a full time artist is like for me. I think I could do it, I could run a successful art business, with regular markets, annual galleries, whatever else I could think of. But for the time being, it’s not possible, nor do I want it to look like that.

All this to say, I’ve been thinking a lot about the gallery experience, the highs of opening night, the lows of not making big sales, not changing my life in one night. It’s all relevant, it’s all there, a part of me and my story. For now, I am proud of how much I grew as an artist in the time I was creating my paintings. I am happy to see them in my home now, even if I want them to sell and clear space too. I am beyond impressed with myself for creating so many pieces in the timeframe and with the discipline that I had. And despite the odds, I want to do it again sometime. I want to keep making art and putting it out there. Even if random men tell me I did it wrong, and no one buys it, I want to do it. For the moments when I can approach strangers discussing how connected they feel to a painting and I can say “hi, I’m the artist, do you have any questions?”