What "Reclamation" means in my studio

There was a painting on my easel that started as something else entirely

I laid down the first brush strokes trying to make something pretty. Soft blues, a gentle gradient. the kind of piece that photographs well. But somewhere in the second layer, it stopped listening to me. The color I reached for wasn't calm...it was raw. I wanted to push through not soothe.

That's the moment Ive come to recognize. The moment a painting stops performing and starts telling the truth.

If i had to distill everything I made down to one word, I it's reclamation. Not the finished healed version of a feeling but the actual act of taking it back. The messy middle. The fog before the clearing.

Every canvas in my studio is some version of that moment: where i stopped trying to make something acceptable and let it become honest instead.

That's the type of art I want to share with the world. Something raw and hopeful. Not just a pretty painting but something meaningful.