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Something I find really difficult to come up with is an artist bio. I am always wondering why the fuck would somebody be interested in who I am and in what I do.
However, I love lists (like… crazy), this is why I found it easier to describe myself in a list of things than actual boring paragraphs.

For a long time, I thought that art was just an escape route for me. Some place safer than my own mind, pouring everything in a painting, in a journal or whatever form it decided to take on a specific moment in my life. But the years are passing and art is becoming more than that.

I want and need to focus on the positive side of having a creative mind.

So there we go, my always in-progress Artist Credo:

I believe in the power of creativity itself.
I believe art can help us heal the deepest oldest wounds.
I believe we all have a creative voice, no matter how it decides to express itself.
I believe we don’t have to share anything we create if we don’t want to.
I believe artists should pull each other up instead of feeling competitive.
I believe creativity has many faces.
I believe we can be original and quirky, because I believe art is a safe place.
I believe in all the possibilities art offers.
I believe in hidden symbols and stories.
I believe in the power given by creativity.
I believe in all that art convey and the subjectivity of it.
I believe in experimentation.
I believe in never-ending inspiration, coming from everywhere.
I believe we can re-invent ourselves through art.
I believe in the cracks, the hurt, the open wounds we pour into our art form.

I love Blue, almost all shades of it. I wanted to try a monochromatic pour while leaving a negative space, so it would not be overwhelming. I have an obsession with negative/blank space in the abstract paintings I am making right now, so I hope you won’t get fed up with them.

If you are not familiar with it, a dirty pour is layering prepared colors into one cup before pouring it on your surface (I have made other videos on my channel, if you’re curious).

I used ColourArte‘s Primary Elements pigment powders for my colors because they are highly pigmented and I just adore their shimmer ! The blues I picked do not belong to the same families (one is a greenish teal, one is a very dark blue, and the last one a pale blue) so I was really curious to see how they would work together. White is always a safe color to pick to go with any other one.

If you watched my previous {Painting In Motion} video, you saw me blow on my wet paint to control how the colors were meeting the “negative space” one. I did this a little on this canvas as well, and love how it turned out.

PRODUCTS USED for this project:

• COOL WATER – Primary Elements
• MYSTIQUE – Primary Elements
• GO NAVY – Primary Elements
• Clear Enamel
• White acrylic paint
• Pouring Medium
• Stretched canvas

I have been thinking a lot lately about if I still want to make a career out of painting, or if I should just paint for my own pleasure, and sell the resulting art if someone feels called to welcome it in their home. It comes back to my latest blogpost about probably going back to school, even if it is over a 3-year full time period.

I am an intuitive person. After a decade of shutting down my Inner Voices and doing what I thought was the right things to do (meaning the things that were not bringing joy or excitement but that an adult should be doing anyway), I was fed up with how unfulfillment was inhabiting me. So it needed to change, I needed to go back to intuition guiding me. I will be honest: it was not easy. Shutting it for so long, it was not my normal anymore. But I got there by trusting I was a worthy person.

When I started my mixed media journey around 2008, I was so stressed out by messing everything up that I was planning every inch of my canvases, sketching before painting etc. 9 years later, I go with the flow. I start with a seed (it can be an intention, a word or a quote, a feeling I wish to convey) and see where it leads me. I believe that my paintings have a life of their own and that I am just the tool to bring them to life. 

I am a Virgo, so I guess this all makes sense somehow (to me anyway). I am an intuitive planner (yes, I totally made that up). I need to know where I am going but to let it all come to me as well. Talk to me about being a living paradox…

One of the shift I want to focus on in the last months of this year is to get rid of all the “should”. I can’t keep up with them anymore, so it is time to say goodbyes, thank you for your service, hopefully we won’t meet again too soon :p

Do you, too, live in the land of Should ? What’s keeping you there ? I welcome any tip to help me out.

As a bonus for today, a video from one of my favorite singer:

I always had been a scholar type of person. Always loved learning, in general. Life had been so I have not completed any degree/diploma after high school. I started plenty of education: to become a French as second language teacher, to become a psychologist (another passion of mine), to become a chef, to be a translator… but I never completed any of that for many many reasons. It is probably my biggest regret because it feels like a failure to me not to have finished University.

When I was in high school, I decided to come to Québec for a year or two as an au-pair nanny so I could attend college while having a home and a job. It did not happen as planned but I remember dreaming of going to University of Laval, then. This dream is not dead, after more than a decade.

I know I don’t need any diploma to work, it is one of the beauty of how it works in Canada. However, it would me a big win for me to go back to school, study something I love, and have a piece of paper as an achievement of that. Now that our daughters are older, they don’t need me as much after school so I could do it.

Working from home is lonely, especially since we don’t know many people here yet and my social life is quite empty. I am socially awkward as my 10yo would say, very difficult to go towards people to make contact in the first place. I want to this for me, even though I assume it makes me a selfish mom and spouse.

However, I am a woman of many interests. And picking an area of study to make a career out of it is the current problem. I don’t want to just go to college and do nothing from it afterwards so I am looking at what the market is right now, what jobs could I get. Decisions decisions…

Are you working in the area you actually studied for ? Do you have any diploma ? I am curious 🙂

After almost a decade of daily creative work, I gained some insight about who I am.

Journaling my heart out through writing (either the daily morning pages, transformed into “whenever pages”, or just writing when it became too heavy inside and had to get out out out). Painting in color so emotions would come forward, so texture would tell my secrets without me having to be loud and clear about it. Cooking so my family would know how much I care about them and their well-being, so I would feed their souls as well as their bodies.

I would do all that so I would not have to truly think and acknowledge what I was going through. 

Health has not been great for most of my life but nothing too serious until my teenage years. I won’t share into details but it changed how people were feeling about me, therefore it changed my vision of myself as well (because it is often easier to take what they tell you you are for true than going further than that).

It took my body to completely crash down in 2011 and to feel sorry and pitiful for myself to decide enough was enough. I was not even 30 yet and could not believe I felt like I was more than twice my age, that my body was abandoning me like that. I remember silently screaming that it was not fair. For two years, I almost lived in my yoga pants and leaving the house only when I had no other choice; it was that bad.

During that time, creativity saved me from going insane. I noticed that the less I was doing, the more problematic it was to hear my Inner Voice and to create anything. I thought I was fighting but was losing the battle because nothing was working. Until I pushed really hard, to accept my situation and let go of all the “should” I was filling my mind with.

I set goals and work my ass off to reach them

I decided to give gluten a break, as for refined sugar. Just to see if my body would be less inflamed. After all, why not ? It was not easy, especially as I am not living alone and that temptation is here all around.

It takes time to figure out a diet that is not so strict that it is not possible in the long run (I am not allergic to anything, so it is all about the decisions I make for myself, nothing is imposed on me). I tried being 100% Paleo and completed several rounds of Whole 30. But because I am not a meat lover and do not enjoy consuming meat at all, it is not suitable for me in its entirety. I tried to be 100% vegan but always come back to a bit of dairy consumption. I was hard on myself for not being able to fit into any dietary box until I said “f**k this, I will just cook and eat what I both love and is good to me”. I lost about 20kg (+- 44lbs) and felt GREAT (see picture taken in my former Teal Studio).

My creative life was at its zenith, daily painting/journaling was perfect. I was finally in my happy place, in all areas of my life.

And then we moved to the other side of the country. I stopped my daily walks in the morning (I highly recommend it, it helps clearing your mind, and to keep moving is essential when you have fibromyalgia), I ate whatever was easy and quick. The results ? The flare-ups came back stronger than ever, I gained 10kg and started to hate what I was seeing in the mirror. Back to square one. I did not paint or sketch for half a year. No inspiration, I did not even see the point of stepping into my Studio (brand new one)… The picture on the right is a recent one, I still do not like what I see BUT I am taking charge. Going to an amazing workout Studio 3 times a week with my husband since April, doing my best to get back to a healthier diet (bye bye Nutella) and not giving up. It takes time for fat to melt, I always had a very hard time losing weight and keeping it off but knowing it is possible is what keeps me going. And you know what ? I am painting again ! Nixies are back after a little break.

This is how reclaiming my body as my own is keeping me creative.