From the River

New studio work coming April 1st!

Hello honeybuns! 

Welcome to my first studio newsletter of 2024. The sun is shining and my SSRI is kickin! The world is on fire, but we’re alive today, yeah?

What follows (eventually) is the 2023 Annual Report of My Creative Life/the Tortured Painters Department, ha.

But first, a little rewind, for context:

In 2022, my partner and I closed the small business (a coffee company) we’d built together since 2015. While there were a multitude of reasons to shut the doors, a key factor was the disproportionate weight of the business, on me, in particular.

My body knew it was time before I did. I was depressed, chronically exhausted, and stressed about our finances. Between supporting the business, my own full-time corporate job, and parenting two small children (usually solo on the weekends), I was depleted and felt like a shell of myself.

My creative practice was inconsistent to nonexistent for several years. I would go weeks, sometimes months, without setting foot in my studio. I’d sometimes get an odd Saturday to spend a few hours in my studio, but that only gave me enough time to dust everything off, get everything prepped, and then stare at the blank canvas. (It was like being a runner who only runs once a month. Good exercise, but hardly beneficial.) In Women Who Run With the Wolves Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés says that what our culture calls burnout is much more–it’s hambre del alma, the starving soul. She writes, “The loss of a clear creative flow constitutes a psychological and spiritual crisis.” 

I was so detached from my own creative animus, that I considered letting go of being an artist altogether. But when I let those words come out of my mouth, tears followed. I knew that I couldn’t abandon such a vital part of my soul. Instead, I needed to figure out how to rescue that part of me. It became apparent that I was going to have to walk away from Monarch, whether or not my partner felt the same way.

Miraculously, he did. My deep knowing gave us both permission to forge a new path. (More on that later. Maybe in a book.)  

So, the business closed–a painful, grief-filled disentangling. We walked into the sunset, united, but scarred.

I was most excited to use my new, hard-won freedom to refocus on my studio work. In the beginning of 2023, it was tempting to fill the new space with obligations–I flirted with residency applications and grant proposals. But when my spiritual director asked me to consider the last time I’d had this kind of space in my life, I realized it had been years. Like, eight years. Babies and the business had taken over my life.

I decided to entirely do away with any creative “shoulds” for a year. I gave myself the gift of total creative freedom. I experimented and played. I collaborated. I trusted my gut. I allowed myself to expand and evolve. I integrated and embraced all of my creative practices–painting, poetry, prose, gatherings, gardening–into my Artist identity.

I hosted an En Plein Air event in my backyard, just because it brought me joy to share my garden and art making with others.

I performed my first public poetry reading.

I dreamed up a big dance party fundraiser for women in Kansas City and saw that dream become a magical reality (twice!) with the partnership of two fast friends. 

2023 was a Renaissance. And as we approach spring, I am excited to share the paintings that came from my rebirth as an Artist.

I have over 20 paintings finished or in process in my studio: still lives and fantasy landscapes and gardens and abstracts. Although disparate in theme, altogether it is a body of work that represents a year of growth. It’s everything that came forth and bloomed, after years of drought. 

I can’t say they’re my magnum opus. But they’re paintings that came about because I reclaimed my own life. They represent a commitment to not abandoning myself. And I think that makes them worth sharing.

From the River, new paintings from my studio, will be released to my website on April 1st*. More info coming sooooon.

I hope they become treasured objects for women, mothers, anyone at all who needs a reminder that your creative spirit is vital to survive this life, and therefore deserves to be nourished. I hope too that you feel encouraged to make your own marks, not just for yourself, but for the collective. From Dr. Estes, again: 

“Creativity is not a solitary movement. That is its power. Whatever is touched by it, whoever hears it, sees it, senses it, knows it, is fed. That is why beholding someone else’s creative word, image, idea, fills us up, inspires us to our own creative work. A single creative act has the potential to feed a continent. One creative act can cause a torrent to break through stone. For this reason, a woman’s creative ability is her most valuable asset, for it gives outwardly and it feeds her inwardly at every level… Wild Woman’s river nurtures and grows us into beings that are like her: life givers. As we create, this wild and mysterious being is creating us in return, filling us with love.” 

Thanks for reading, friends, and bearing witness to my creative life.

xoxo.

Jaime

*My original planned release date was March 19th, the first day of spring! But yada yada yada, circumstances changed. Please pardon my pivot!