What one word do you hear most when people look at your art?

For me, the answer to this question is simple.

“Interesting.”

For a while, I didn’t know what to do with that reaction. It can sound vague or polite. Not quite praise. Not quite criticism. Just… interesting. 

But the more I heard it and paid actually attention, the more I realized people might actually mean something more specific. 

I think “interesting” often means:

• recognizable, but not completely clear - They see something they recognize, sort of.
• familiar, but slightly unsettled - They see a bird or flowers but wonder why it looks the way it does.
• something that keeps unfolding the longer you look at it - They need more time to really have an opinion.

If any of these are true, then woohoo, because that’s the kind of painting I’m drawn to making.

I’m less interested in exact description. If I want a perfect replica of something, I’ll use my camera. Painting becomes more compelling to me when forms begin to loosen, shift, or partially disappear. I want to create something that the viewer is drawn to but may not even be sure why they are drawn to it.

In my world, a bird can still feel like a bird without every feather being explained. A flower can still hold its presence without being fully resolved.

That space between recognition and abstraction is where most of my work lives.

I don’t usually begin a painting with a fully formed concept or message. I tend to work more intuitively than that. Certain forms keep reappearing, and over time I’ve learned to trust that repetition instead of over-explaining it. I used to (and still do at times) wonder why I paint flowers. I doubt that anyone who knows me, even a little bit, would associate me with flowers. Yet, I am consistently drawn to painting flowers - or at least a some form of a flower.

What matters to me is that the painting stay alive and have energy. That something exists beyond an image of a "thing" that draws the viewer in. A painting can lose that feeling or draw if I define it or overwork it too much.  The process is usually about finding that balance somewhere between control and letting go.

So for me, when people say the work feels “interesting,” I take that as a positive response to the way I want to paint and the type of work that I want to create. I don't want the painting to give away everything. I want people to want or even need to spend some time with it in order to figure out what it means to them.