What Becomes Part of Our Lives
I am very attached to certain places. Naturally, much of that feeling comes from what surrounds me that I can see or experience, but maybe it’s even more about what that place brings up for me. Maybe it’s about what was going on in my life while I was there. I love the idea that a painting can become part of our story. It can remind us of a season of our life or an important milestone and become this beautiful reminder we get to live with every day.
There are places in Northern Michigan that instantly take me back to another time in my life just by seeing them again. A certain stretch of shoreline. The orchards in bloom. Even the color of the lake on a particular kind of day. I think art can become like that too. We live with it long enough that it begins to hold memories we never could have planned for when we first brought it home.
Sharing Seasons of Water has given me more reason to think about where paintings live and how they hold space and experience for us. In the studio, I spend so much time considering what happens within the canvas. Even the distance we stand from a painting changes what we notice. From farther away, you take in the whole composition. Up close, you see the history of the marks and earlier layers that remain visible. I love that there can be more to discover, even in something familiar.
Once the work leaves the studio and hangs in someone else’s space, I get to see it differently. In the studio, I’m usually working on several paintings at once, so I’m always seeing each piece in relation to the others around it. When one moves into a new space, it gets to stand on its own. I notice different things about it, how it works in the room, and how it begins to feel like part of that place.
And then when a painting goes to live in a shared space, everyone gets to have their own experience with it. Someone might love the color, someone else might see a place they know, and another person may simply enjoy having it there. I think that’s part of the magic for me. I can make a painting from my own experience, but once it leaves me, it becomes something entirely different for someone else.
Living beside the lake, there’s a stretch of shoreline I visit multiple times a day and still find myself wondering what the water is doing. Knowing a place well doesn’t bore me, rather it gives
I think familiar things become part of us. A view, an object, even something small in our home can gather meaning simply because it’s been there through so much of our life. A painting can do that too. Over time, it becomes part of what makes a place feel like home.
Recently, while I was live painting at the DELAMAR, I met a couple getting married that afternoon. I sent a book, and a small hand-painted work to them to share in their joy. Later they chose several of my paintings to commemorate their wedding and new life together. I love thinking about how those paintings are now part of their story of such a beautiful moment. I hope they will always remind them of their wedding and new life, while also becoming part of all the ordinary days that follow.
That's part of what I love about living with art. A painting might begin as a reminder of one particular day, but then years of life happen around it. It becomes part of ordinary mornings, celebrations, moves, conversations, all the little things we could never predict when we first chose it. Its meaning doesn't have to stay where it started. It can grow right along with us.
When you return to a place you love, what do you look forward to seeing again?
