A Deeper Look at the Works Hanging in My Latest Solo Exhibition (PART TWO)

My solo show, which I’ve been calling “Hidden Feelings” has officially been hung at Central Bank of Boone County in Columbia, Missouri USA. If you live around the area, or happen to be passing through, I’d love it if you stopped by to check it out.

For those of you who are not in the area, and for those of you who would like a deeper understanding of the works hanging on the wall, I’ve put together this list of each piece and what inspired its creation.

This is PART TWO of that list. I highly encourage you to check out PART ONE so that you can learn more about the exhibit and its meaning, as well as the first ten pieces you will see as you walk through the show.

Sea Grasses

Watercolor and Ink on hot press paper | $200

This piece was created for Wordless Wednesday, which is essentially a weekly celebration of intuitive art and the healing power of scribbling out your feelings. On this day I create my own “wordless diary” entry and encourage others to do the same.

For this particular piece I decided to go with watercolors as I hadn’t used them in a while and I was feeling the itch to play with something splashy and colorful. Here is what I wrote on Instagram:

For #wordlesswednesday I decided to get out my watercolors. This medium is definitely the one I’m most comfortable with, which has allowed me to relax a bit and sort of meditate on these past few weeks.

This piece was definitely influenced by the Bermuda Triangle show I’m watching, and all the beautiful dives they’ve been doing. Lots of sea grasses and foliage and little fish. I haven’t been to the ocean in nearly 10 years, and I’m beginning to realize how criminal that is.

Moonrise

Watercolor and Ink on cotton rag paper | $200

For those of you who have been following me since the beginning, you’ll remember “The Girl” who showed up periodically in my works. This is one of those works. There were a lot of interpretations of who she might be but for me the girl was something too deep for me to express in words. In the works she appears, she is surrounded in natural elements like roots, trees, and leaves. But she isn’t just there to experience nature, she is nature, which is depicted very clearly in this painting with her braided hair being entwined with the vines that grow throughout the piece.

I feel a deep connection with this silhouette as she is my subconscious personified, my “shadow self.”

Dance of the Baleine

Watercolor and Ink on hot press paper | $375

Baleine is French for whale and the whale is the subject of this piece. I had been watching a lot of ocean documentaries, some in a positive light, others in a negative light, and was feeling both inspired and defeated. I wanted to wave a magic wand and instantly have all the plastic gone and the coral reefs colorful again and all the sea animals returned to the home they had centuries ago. This piece is fueled by all of those feelings, and is almost celebratory of the ocean itself, which combined provide an optimistic view of how things can change.

In this work I see a few whales, dancing among the bubbles of the sea, some shimmering gold as they catch the sunlight beaming from above.

The Inner-Workings of Industry

Ink on cotton rag paper | $300

This piece is from my Road Maps series, a collection of coffee-toned ink drawings about our existence: where we are today, who we were yesterday, who we’ll be tomorrow. Since each piece was created with intuitive methods such as automatic drawing and asemic writing, which require one to be present and “mindful,” there is an even deeper meaning and that is: the only you that matters is the you of right now.

The marks in this piece are very reminiscent of industry and the gears that make a civilization go. Right now there are millions of people working in these fields and are keeping your lights on, your water running, your gasoline at the station, your food stocked on the shelves. My hope is that those who view this piece will take a moment to think about how our basic needs are currently being met.

Stairway to the Sky

Ink on Lokta paper | $175

This piece was taken directly from one of my wordless diaries. Sometimes the freedom in knowing that “nobody has to ever see this” can give me the bravery to create my most honest work. The elements in this work, from the graveyard to the stairs to the wandering spirits at the top lead me to believe I was once again reflecting on the afterlife. It’s comforting sometimes to think that there may be something similar to angels on the other side that help you in both life and death.

Pieces like this are also very common when I’m watching Supernatural. The whole idea of the “veil” and angels vs demons (and even romance between the two) has always fascinated me and inspires works where death is present, as well as a realm we can’t see when alive. It’s a somewhat therapeutic way to deal with my own mortality.

Take a Right at the Old Stone Bridge

Ink on coffee-toned paper | $175

This is another piece from my Road Maps series, a collection of coffee-toned works about our existence in both the past, present, and future (and how our present self is our only “real” self as the other selves either no longer exist or haven’t existed yet).

This work in particular is about a place where nature has kind of taken back the land. There are little landmarks here and there left behind by a community that gathered here centuries ago, such as the stone bridge. Viewing this map, you will have to find the stone bridge to make that right, connecting your present self with haunts of the past, before inevitably leaving it behind and moving forward to the future. Where does that right lead? I like to think it leads to an old, overgrown cemetery where someone from my ancestry is buried.

Flow

Ink on tea-toned paper | $175

This was the third piece created specifically for this exhibition. The focus on this work was simply the “flow state” that we enter when we are truly engrossed in a project. This flow state is very important to intuitive art as it means we’re totally in the moment and can often help pack the most emotional fuel into a piece.

I know I’ve entered the flow state when I sort of “return to reality” after working for a period of time and learn it’s been an hour or two. When I’m immersed in the flow state I often feel things I don’t normally feel during my daily life, like sadness or insightfulness. This is usually due to the ambience I set before I begin, such as lighting candles, burning incense, and/or turning on wordless music that both moves me emotionally and turns my brain on Deep Thought mode.

It is, quite literally, my form of keeping a diary.

Climb

Ink and graphite on paper | $400

This is a sister piece to the first work hung in this exhibition: My Best Friend. It was fueled by the same emotions, the struggles of mothering a strong-willed tween and feeling inadequate as a parent. As the second work in the collection of three (My Best Friend being the third), this one seems to show the uphill battle we often face as mothers. But we climb nonetheless because we love our children and we are determined to give them not only a great childhood but also the tools they need to have a successful and happy life.

Shadows

Ink on Lokta paper | $150

Another piece taken directly from my wordless diary, Shadows was drawn during a quiet moment alone with my thoughts. The minimalistic quality shows the day’s end, the long shadows drawn by the setting sun. These were, of course, un-planned marks, but somehow they depicted the moment I was experiencing at the time. I had quiet music on, possibly even a candle, the cleaning was done for the day, and the sun was almost set outside. It was a nice way to bring it all to a close.

By The Bay

Every time there is a “bay” of some sort in my works, it’s almost always about Chicago and the awesome times I had there in my 20s. We’d go every year for labor day, only stopping after we had our daughter. My favorite place was Navy Pier, which at that time was a lot quieter than the bustling mall it is today. We’d feed crumbs from our breakfast–awesome omelets from The Billy Goat Tavern–to the little sparrows congregating beneath our feet. Then we’d take a walk down the pier, admiring the silhouettes of sailboats, mere black triangles in the thick morning fog.

Conquer

Another sister piece to My Best Friend and Climb, Conquer is about that initial motherhood hurt I felt, the grief of loving someone so much who hates you a lot of the time. It’s not a very large piece, and not much is to it, because the wound was still so raw I could barely stand it. When I finally posted it to Instagram, days later, I wrote:

This piece is about motherhood and its many challenges and growths, about finding our way through the cracks in the stone so we can guide both ourselves and our sprout(s) to the light.

Cyclical

Ink | $300

This was a piece created for no reason other than enjoyment. While art may be my career, it’s also one of my hobbies, and sometimes those two overlap with works like this one.

The title came about because the shape looks an awful lot like a bicycle, which I find fitting considering the only reason I picked up a pen in the first place was to have some fun. In fact, a big reason I create anything is because it’s fun and it’s neat to have a visual representation of all the fun I had.

That’s what this piece is about, and I think it’s great that it’s at the end of the “walkthrough” of the show. It is a reminder at the very end, when you have your finished product, that the journey you took to reach that finished work is where the real art lies.

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I hope you’ve enjoyed my little “virtual tour” of my solo exhibition. If you are interested in purchasing any of these works, send me an email to the address lina@linaforrester.com. All of the works are framed and wired and can be shipped internationally.

And if you’re in the neighborhood of Columbia, Missouri USA head downtown to the Central Bank of Boone County and check out the gallery in person.

Until next time…