Artist Statement: Moth Spirit

This painting took me almost a year to complete. It’s rare for me to spend this much time on a single painting, which led me to almost give up on it several times. Each time I said I was done with it, an idea would come to mind and I would continue on. I guess I had a hard time expressing the concept of the painting.

Ironically enough, the meaning behind the painting is about letting go of control. Allow things to come to you as pieces of this painting came to me throughout the course of nine months.

Letting go of control is a concept I’ve accepted only recently. I don’t feel like it’s something that’s encouraged, at least in the environment I’ve been in. Everyone always wants to know your plan. What are you doing? Where are you going? How does that effect your future? Where do you see yourself in five years? So I would come up with these plans. All I got from all this plan making was the discovery that I am unable to resist breaking the rules. After a few months of following these elaborate paths I’ve created, I would suddenly toss all of it out the window for something that peaked my interest in the moment.

This painting didn’t feel right since the beginning. I decided to be spontaneous and upcycle this chalkboard to use as my canvas, mainly because I liked the color of the frame. The chalkboard didn’t take paint very well and would randomly peel off. I kept painting on it anyways. I started with a blue background then covered it with yellow.

I wanted my subject to represent playfulness and being carefree. At first I was going to paint a monkey but as I was loading up the canvas in my car a moth landed on me. I liked the idea that moths would carelessly dance around a flame, not worrying about getting burned. I didn’t want to paint fire, so I painted vines that resembled the color of fire with the moth flying towards it. This made me think of moving towards what you’re drawn to in the moment. And for some, fire can represent passion. The triangles all point in the same direction representing the flow state and the different color clouds shows the passing of time during flow. I always like to add plants to represent the process of growth.

As I am constantly growing and evolving, I hope to move in the direction that pulls me in the moment. I hope to be guided by passion and curiosity instead of fear of uncertainty.