Fear has a bad reputation it doesn't entirely deserve.
My meditation teacher described it this way. Think of your body as one of those old coal trains. Through the meadows the pace stays steady. But when there's a mountain in the distance, the crew can't wait until you're climbing to start loading more coal. They have to begin building power long before the incline. The tingle in your belly that you've been labeling fear might not be a warning. It might be your body loading coal for something it already knows is coming.
I began testing that idea. Using the feeling as a signal to keep going rather than a reason to stop. It changed what I thought I was capable of.
Gathering Power was painted in Michigan, at a lake I knew from childhood, during the week of my uncle's funeral. Grief and water and the particular ease of a landscape that remembers you before you remember yourself. I wanted to bring that ease back to Montreal, to the people who eat their meals in the cafeteria of the Old Brewery Mission, the organisation that supports Montreal's homeless population, where this work hung for two months. Peace made visible and put somewhere it was needed.
The turquoise field is built in several layers, greens and blues laid over each other until the depth became atmospheric, the kind of blue that has weather in it. The orange mass in the upper left is the most physically active area of the canvas, the darkest strokes impastoed and dense, earlier layers showing through where the paint thins. The drips that run through the composition are intentional and structurally significant: the canvas was turned multiple times during the painting process, so what reads as drips climbing rather than falling is accurate. Gravity pulled them in one direction and then the canvas was turned and gravity pulled again. The result is a surface that records movement through time rather than a single moment.
The circular mark beneath the orange mass grounds the energy above it, a contained arc that holds the gathering rather than releasing it. The painting's formal argument is about accumulation and readiness, power building before the mountain appears.
Gathering Power was later placed in the Solar Plexus room of the Human Design Hotel project in Montreal, a space designed to allow all emotions to be fully felt. The painting brought stillness to a bedroom in that context, the turquoise field doing what it was always made to do.
From the Serenity collection, 2022.
From the artist's journal:
"If we think of our emotions as energy, perhaps that tingle in our bellies that we feel, and label fear is actually a boost of energy preparing us to do something we have never done before. Perhaps we are gathering power to climb and grow and expand. I began using that feeling of fear in my belly as a signal to keep going and to acknowledge that something new was coming. I began to use that power to do the things I hadn't thought that I was capable of."
Fear has a bad reputation it doesn't entirely deserve.
My meditation teacher described it this way. Think of your body as one of those old coal trains. Through the meadows the pace stays steady. But when there's a mountain in the distance, the crew can't wait until you're climbing to start loading more coal. They have to begin building power long before the incline. The tingle in your belly that you've been labeling fear might not be a warning. It might be your body loading coal for something it already knows is coming.
I began testing that idea. Using the feeling as a signal to keep going rather than a reason to stop. It changed what I thought I was capable of.
Gathering Power was painted in Michigan, at a lake I knew from childhood, during the week of my uncle's funeral. Grief and water and the particular ease of a landscape that remembers you before you remember yourself. I wanted to bring that ease back to Montreal, to the people who eat their meals in the cafeteria of the Old Brewery Mission, the organisation that supports Montreal's homeless population, where this work hung for two months. Peace made visible and put somewhere it was needed.
The turquoise field is built in several layers, greens and blues laid over each other until the depth became atmospheric, the kind of blue that has weather in it. The orange mass in the upper left is the most physically active area of the canvas, the darkest strokes impastoed and dense, earlier layers showing through where the paint thins. The drips that run through the composition are intentional and structurally significant: the canvas was turned multiple times during the painting process, so what reads as drips climbing rather than falling is accurate. Gravity pulled them in one direction and then the canvas was turned and gravity pulled again. The result is a surface that records movement through time rather than a single moment.
The circular mark beneath the orange mass grounds the energy above it, a contained arc that holds the gathering rather than releasing it. The painting's formal argument is about accumulation and readiness, power building before the mountain appears.
Gathering Power was later placed in the Solar Plexus room of the Human Design Hotel project in Montreal, a space designed to allow all emotions to be fully felt. The painting brought stillness to a bedroom in that context, the turquoise field doing what it was always made to do.
From the Serenity collection, 2022.
From the artist's journal:
"If we think of our emotions as energy, perhaps that tingle in our bellies that we feel, and label fear is actually a boost of energy preparing us to do something we have never done before. Perhaps we are gathering power to climb and grow and expand. I began using that feeling of fear in my belly as a signal to keep going and to acknowledge that something new was coming. I began to use that power to do the things I hadn't thought that I was capable of."
