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.
Springtime as a kid was always one of the most exciting times for me. I can still taste the crisp air, can hear the robins singing their morning song. I remember always climbing the mulberry trees to check whether they had berries yet, remember plummeting down my aunt’s steep driveway on a big wheel, my only way of stopping being a nose-dive into a shallow trench. And the best days were the windy days, when you could practically chew on all the smells as I slipped in between the billowing bedsheets my mom had hung on the clothesline to dry.
Spring meant something to me then, and those vibes never changed.
So, when it began to feel like spring again a few weeks ago, I cleaned the house and opened the windows, bought candles that smelled of peach instead of pine, and I took Goo to the park almost every day, where I would feel the sun on my face and let the southern wind wake me up from hibernation.
That’s when the playground scribbles began, which were a combination of alcohol markers, colored pencils, watercolors, and charcoal. Allowing myself the freedom of as many tools and colors as I wanted brought back that childhood mentality when merely holding a fat crayon was a feat comparable to the Mona Lisa. Combining this medium freedom, the artistic naivety and the springlike weather, I came up with the Springtime Vibes collection.
These works are about the infant spring, when the trees are barely budding and the nests are still quiet and the seedlings only just begin to sprout. This is a delicate time for nature, in my opinion. It’s a transition period. Trees go from living death to living in a matter of weeks. The grass goes green. Tulips, daffodils, and Irises bloom. The whole process must take an exuberant amount of energy. An energy I worked to portray in my vigorous scribbling and bright colors, while also keeping the quiet, infant moments intact with light pencil marks.
The new series has eight pieces in all ranging in size from 5×7 inches to 19×24 inches. Each are works on different types of paper and were made with a variety of tools from alcohol markers to colored pencils.
I have been in full experiment mode lately. What this means is I have been trying a ton of new things, filling sketchbooks with “let me see what this does” adventures, and scribbling without an end game. It sounds fun, but this isn’t always welcomed by my conscious thoughts. Mostly because when I’m experimenting my work is all over the place, and I start asking myself a ton of questions like…
What kind of artist am I?
Is this the kind of artist I want to be?
Would this even hang in a gallery?
Is my style shifting?
Do I even have a style?
Can I call myself a professional? Or am I just a hobbyist splashing around? A hobbyist who needs to get a real job..
The year started quietly for me, like the morning after a good snowfall. Muffled. Dormant. I was a hibernating bear.
Needless to say it took a few days to get back into the groove of creating. My goal was simple for the month: form a gouache habit so that I could start—and successfully complete—a 100 days project.
That project starts January 30th.
But the new year, as I’ve said before, isn’t a cure-all. Looking behind me, beyond that dividing line between 2022 and 2023, my art had been lacking in something, and still was. I felt free in scribbling, as usual, but there was just something…hollow about it all. Maybe I’d just fallen into a routine of “sameness” and my work had become less about expression and more about muscle memory.
However, after the process of forming this daily gouache habit began, I came to my first conclusion: my world didn’t have enough color.
In the past I’ve always kept my tones a bit desaturated so that they would appear more natural, organic, and sophisticated. Which is interesting to me because if I were to describe my personality it would be the exact opposite. Loud, vibrant, and playful. A bit much at times.
But just working with vibrant colors wasn’t enough. While my studies gave me a buzzy feeling, my larger works were still lacking in something, despite their newfound vibrancy. After a week or so of discovering new artists, creating vision boards, and self-exploration I came to my second conclusion: the loud colors were coming across, but the playful aspect was not.
So I turned a geometrical “almost perfect” painting into a wild scribble of personal reflection, inspire by the feeling I’d gotten after seeing the crescent moon at the blue hour of a recent morning. I called the initial, geometrical version “dishonest” on Twitter, and when asked why I thought it was dishonest, I responded:
…art is play, scribbly, and a dance. I shouldn’t edit over the dance.
In other words, painting the scribble and transforming it into this geometrical, neat and orderly piece was like telling a great lie. And not only was I lying to my audience, but I was lying to myself.
BeforeAfter
I am not clean, orderly, or neat. I am a big scribbly mess of energy and I tend to run eople away before I can make friends with them because I’m just a bit….much. When my art is also a bit…much…my covering it up is almost like trying to hide my identity.
Intuitive art is not about hiding your identity.
Art, in general, is not about hiding your identity.
So I went back to the very root of why I create art in the first place: it’s fun. I like smearing paint on a canvas while dancing to Aurora and Harry Styles, so that was a good start. Art went back to being more about the process and less about the final result.
But it’s not always rainbows and butterflies and play. While January has apparently been a good month so far, by the looks of my scribbles, my work is not always fueled by joy and playfulness. Sometimes I’m in a shit mood and can only think about mass shootings and the dying planet. In the past I’ve often kept those negatively-fueled pieces to myself. But that, again, is another lie. Life is up and down and turned around and upside down and nonsense. So keep an eye out for the grumpy art too.
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My newest scribbles are making their way onto my shop as they’re finished. Click here if you’d like to take a look. If you have any questions you can email me lina@linaforrester.com
Until next time, may your scribbles be scribbly and your identity be un-masked.
From handmade cards and ornaments, to framed fine art, here is a list of gifts you can buy from my Etsy shop.
Don’t forget, my Etsy sale will be running until this Thursday. Get 20% off almost everything, plus free shipping if you spend over 35$.
Handmade Cards
All of my cards are made with Khadi paper, which has a nice textured “organic” feel. Each one is painted with a unique, intuitive design, which means no two cards are alike. It’s like having a small original painting.
Just like my cards, each of these bookmarks is a tiny original painting. They were painted with high-quality watercolors on a variety of papers, from textured cotton paper to smooth hot press. All of them have also been laminated to ensure they stay safe from tea spills.
I sewed each of these books with a Khadi cover and watercolor paper for the inside. These little books are perfect for travel and hiking, and although the paper is meant for watercolor, it’s resilient enough to endure almost any medium.
Yes, they are made with real clay, the kind you have to put into a kiln. I’m fortunate that the gallery in my area has a ceramics room, which makes it a lot easier for me to make little things like these handmade ornaments. I have a variety of cameras, bunnies, and intuitive shapes to choose from.
Last but not least, I have a large selection of fine art on my Etsy shop. They are reasonably priced, and there is even a listing of ten paintings, each of them only 50$ each! All of my artwork comes with a mat (except for the 50$ an below artwork). Simply choose the frame size and I will have one professionally cut for you.
With things costing much more nowadays, supporting small businesses is even more important, and it would mean the world to me if you would take a peek at my Etsy to find some great gifts.
We all get into that “assembly line” mentality, essentially creating for the sake of having more content. And that can work to our advantage if we have, say, a trade show coming up, or our Etsy inventory has gotten a bit low.
But sometimes I feel like I’ve just been banging out painting after painting and getting absolutely nowhere. This is when it’s time to get back to the basics. I have to get back into that mindset of this is what I love instead of this is what I do.
There are a few things I do in order to re-connect with my art. Use them when you start to feel that disconnect so you can get back to making meaningful work that not only reaches you on an emotional level, but your audience as well.
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Start From Scratch
Lately I’ve been focusing more on making tiny books and zines because they feel so special to me, like a little treasure, and there’s no question as to why that is. It’s because I make them from scratch. From cutting the paper, to folding it, to staining it, to binding and creating covers. I do all of that before I even start the project of adding little paintings to each page and telling a nature-y story. In other words I find that emotional connection before I even begin.
Think about ways you can start from scratch with your work. Could you stretch your own canvas instead of buying a pack from the store? Could you make your own beads for the jewelry you create? Could you make your own watercolor paint? I guarantee you it will bring you closer to your art.
Tie in Your Own LifeExperiences
As an intuitive artist a lot of my art will be influenced by current emotions/experiences, but sometimes I will find something that “works” and will run with it and before you know it I’m back in that assembly line mentality and I’ve painted six landscapes that all look pretty much the same. This usually means I need to take a step back and go live life a bit so I can come back with new material. It can be something as simple as a color I saw in the wildflowers growing on the side of the highway, or a murmuration I saw billowing overhead, or the feeling I get from watching Heartstopper for the 50th time. Then I can tie these experiences/feelings into my work.
Think about something that has inspired you lately. The color of the school bus as it picked up your child. The feel of your cat’s fur as you dug your fingers into it. The pattern you saw in a rock on your morning walk. Even emotions like anger and frustration that come from things like watching the news can all be slipped into your work in some way. And when you come back to your work in the future, you might even remember what it was that inspired you in the first place.
Finish with a Bang
I have this issue with following through once a piece is finished. Usually I’ll just set it aside until I decide to enter it into an exhibition and then I either grab a frame from another piece and re-use it or buy a frame on sale. But I’ve realized lately that this is doing a disservice to my art. I need to remind myself that once I’ve signed the bottom of my painting that I’m still only 2/3 of the way finished. The final 1/3 of the process is the display.
So instead of finding the cheapest frame or re-using one that’s falling apart, I need to think about the perfect frame for this particular piece. If there is a frame out there that was made for this painting, I need to put effort into finding it. I also need to think about the matting. Do I want to bring out that pop of color I added with a double mat? I’ve seen artists do amazing things with their mats, from stitching things into it, to extending the painting down to the frame itself.
What can you do to display your work in the way it deserves? Is there a special box you can find for those earrings you made? Could you search for frames at an antique store instead of a supermarket? And when you find the perfect way to bring your piece to a close, leave it. Don’t steal the frame for another piece or rip it from its mat. Making this promise to yourself (and your piece) will further solidify your need to making the perfect choice when choosing the best way to show it off to the world.
Finding that emotional connection with each and every piece is not exactly something we actively think of at every step of the creative process. And I think that’s how we slip into that mindset of quantity over quality. But art isn’t something we can–or should–assembly line. We create to see ourselves, to use our voice, and to help others be seen. So instead of going through the motions, work toward finding that connection. Find a reason to care about each individual piece as if each piece is the only one of its kind. Because it is.
Until next time, may your art be meaningful and your connections be strong.
My spring collection, Road Maps, has officially launched! This is a project I started some time in February, when I worked on mindfulness through drawing with only one color: black. As I worked, I noticed how each of the pieces would resemble a map one might draw for someone else to help them reach a destination. This, in turn, gave the series its name.
What I love most about these works is how they are similar to one another, yet somehow so different, which seems to resemble our own journey as humans. We are all on different paths with different destinations and have come from many different pasts, but we are all on our own trek toward something. What are you trekking toward?
The tiny details in each piece also give the viewer pause, which shows him/her the importance of being present. We may be from somewhere and on our way to somewhere else, but the only thing that is certain is the right now. Who you are today is the most important you.
Each of these works was intuitively drawn, with the occasional conscious thought here and there to give it the attention it deserves. All of them tell a story for me, but that’s my own story. It’s the stories they tell you that give these works a funny kind of magic. What you see in one drawing may be the complete opposite of what another sees.
Finally, I noticed that I was merging both man-made objects with the natural world, which resonates quite deeply with my belief that we as humans are a part of nature, not a separate entity.
I haven’t talked about this much online, but I was diagnosed last year with OS (other specific) ADHD. The diagnosis basically means that I didn’t score low enough on the tests to be officially diagnosed with ADHD, but am struggling with ADHD nonetheless. At the time of the testing, I was on a medication that was “taking the edge off” so to speak, and so I wonder what my testing would look like if I hadn’t been on this med. But at the time I didn’t really care about the lack of officiality of my diagnosis. The med was working. I felt great and had plenty of focus. I could hold a conversation with my husband, and I didn’t have to ask him to repeat himself even though I’d been staring right at him as he’d talked for a full five minutes.
But some time in November 2021, maybe even earlier, I started to notice that I felt sick each day. I was shaky, nauseous, and sweaty. About a week before December I realized it was my heart rate. I had my husband feel my racing pulse so I would know I wasn’t crazy. Then I started wearing my Fitbit simply so I could check it each time I started feeling sick. My heart rate was at around 100bpm when I was in a resting state, which is high for me, and my heart would spike at around 135bpm when I was doing something casual like cleaning up after the kiddos at the After School Art Club. It wasn’t coffee, as I’d been totally averted to caffeine since these symptoms had started, and so there was only one other thing it could be.
Why now? I wondered. I’d been on this medication since April and now all of a sudden I was having these symptoms? In December, my doctor suggested I stop taking the medication and to assess after a few days to see if I felt better. I did, and my heart rate quickly returned to normal.
It took about two weeks to fully start to feel my brain return to the state it had been before the medication. And holy hell does this feel awful. I can’t believe I survived for as long as I did without the medication. How could I have ever put up with this? How could I have ever believed this was a normal way for anyone to feel?
My. Brain. Won’t. Shut. Up.
I’m constantly distracted by–ooh shiny–and I’m back to having my poor husband repeat himself all the time. My conversations have returned to long tangents and confusing interruptions.
And my artwork is starting to suffer as well. I no longer have the focus I did beforehand. I can’t even think straight to sit still for five minutes and paint something. My artwork is all over the place. One day I will be super into abstract landscapes and will decide “officially” that I am now a landscape painter. The next day I will be back scribbling bunnies on my iPad and will decide “officially” that I am now an illustrator. But I can’t get any goals in line for either, which isn’t surprising, since I can’t even think straight enough to remember to do normal adult stuff like start the laundry and pay the bills.
But me…being the me that I am, is trying to find the silver lining in all of this. Perhaps this is just the chaos I need to “level up” in my art. Maybe this lack of focus will give me…erm…focus. Looking through past works depicting times in which I was able to slow down, despite all of the noise in my mind, and take in the present from moment to moment, I’ve found some of my most honest work.
This piece, for instance, was created during a time in which I had been feeling hurried and cluttered. It was a rainy, soggy day–my favorite kind of day–and all I wanted to do was stay home and curl up under fuzzy blankies with my cats and nap, but I had to drive to the post office downtown. Begrudgingly, I got my errand done and then, as I left the post office, time sort of slowed for me. I had jazz going on the radio, warm air coming from the vents, and all of the car lights, city lights, were dazzling on my wet windshield. I can still picture the moment. I remember thinking to myself, “I wouldn’t be witnessing this right now if I’d of stayed at home.”
Later that evening I would sit down for a good scribble on my iPad. I had no image in mind, but this is what ultimately came forward, and I quickly recognized the blobs of color and the city lights. I had subconsciously drawn this moment between me, the city, and the rain.
These four pieces were scribbled out when we had taken in Coco, the stray cat who had shown up on our doorstep, covered in fleas and very sick. I get very stressed out when my routine is thrown off, especially if it throws off the routine in the entire household, and Coco definitely knocked our routines off the rails with meds and feeding tubes and vet bills. My cat, Chai, would never come out. And, with us being each others’ therapy animal, this made it even worse.
In these four works I see things off the rails, chaos, a disrupted home life. But I also see that little gleam of optimism that I can never seem to get rid of. I like to think that these were a subconscious way of telling myself that things will be alright. That eventually the routine would return, and the family would be whole. Larger, but whole. Today Coco is a happy and rambunctious cat who loves to play with fuzz balls and meow incessantly until he receives pets. And our routine is pretty much back to normal.
I’m not sure at this point what the future holds for me and my brain. I know that the one med wasn’t the only one in the world, and my doc and I will be meeting soon to discuss further options. Until then, I suppose you and I will both need to be on the lookout for scribbles that tell stories about moments captured in time.
Until next time, may your brain be calm and your blankies be warm.
Scribble Chai 