And that is the story of my art— everything I used to push away, the parts I thought were too broken or too messy? When I share them with you, we can see them in a different way. We can hold multiple truths, witness them with love, strengthen our connections.

Each of these collections combined my own history, my own interests, and my own idiosyncrasies at the heart of the work. The heart and the soul and the guts of the work are what make the Work work. I had to know what I liked in order to include it in my artwork. The excavating meaning — the Spiritual Archaeology, the inner work — starts with that kernel self-knowledge. It starts with showing up, with a desire to know and be known, even — especially — in the face of the unknown, blank canvas.

It is no wonder that my visual art style relies so heavily on making associations among multiple influences. When I talk about my process — Spiritual Archaeology, for the new folks around here — I refer to this as synchronicity. If you’ve heard me get excited about it, you may have heard me talk about “pings.”

So what does it look like to be a process-driven artist? Well, in my case, it looks a little like chaos, a lot like ADHD, and a medium amount of me listening to the same songs over and over while I look at half-finished paintings. And sometimes it looks like me sitting at a computer in a grain inspection building and suddenly grabbing my pen to excitedly scribble down the perfect idea.