Embracing all that’s raw and unfiltered

The beginning of autumn is like a second new year — as life’s rhythms return after the busy summer months, we often find ourselves revisiting our goals and recommitting to those things we had felt so strongly about at the beginning of the year.

For me, I find myself recommitting to living life unfiltered. Being my most open and authentic self is always a goal for me because when I settle into it, it helps me connect with all the best things in life.

To that end, I have been spending a lot of time thinking about this painting I completed earlier this year, which I call Raw Honey.

This canvas was brought to me by a friend, stretched years ago, with what appears to be redwood stretcher bars. It was a hand-painted, gessoed canvas, a little worse for wear, so I re-painted it and covered the surface in fragments of parchment-colored vintage paper. The feeling was “Raw and torn”.

The materials I used were brought to me by friends: an old letter written on earthy red paper from Nepal conveying grief and love over someone’s passing; vintage posters advertising pure honey; a map of Paris streets symbolizing the many miles a day a bee travels; collected fabrics, acrylic paint, latex paint.

While most of my work incorporates elements of collage like this, I typically transform them, nearly beyond recognition. I use the colors and textures as starting points for creating layered compositions where the orginal materials become more like memories, altered by all that came later.

But for this piece, I took a different approach. I left the collage raw, embracing the complexity of the materials and their differences rather than pushing them to meld into a single surface. This choice empowered me to let my marks on the surface be raw and unfiltered too. They are energetic gestures, rough around the edges so you can see exactly how each stroke was made.

In the spirit of Raw Honey, I am committing to being more raw, more open in the coming months. Sages say that honey and sweets help restore one’s vision and that’s exactly what this painting has done for me. It has helped me overcome the urge to be buttoned up and always polished, restoring my vision of the beauty in being authentically unfiltered.

If you need that reminder like I do now and again, maybe this painting will help you too. Swing by the gallery to take in all its raw details.