Saying yes to yourself turns out to be the hardest and the lightest thing at the same time.
Not the dramatic yes. The quiet one. The one where you stop consulting everyone else about the direction of your own life and let your feelings do what they were designed to do, point you somewhere. Your intuition as compass. Your desires and curiosities as the only luggage you're carrying.
Set Free shares its palette with Activation, the same Payne's Grey, the same gold and ochre, painted in the aftermath of that awakening. But where Activation records a negotiation, layers pressing against each other, Payne's Grey over yellow over Payne's Grey again, Set Free is what comes after. The paint here is thinly applied, largely a single pass, the hand moving across the surface with the particular confidence of someone who has already made the decision. The dense mass on the left is where the last of the weight lives, Payne's Grey and dark gold working against each other one final time. Then the painting opens. The right field is all air and movement, loose circular marks in cream and grey, light pressure, almost calligraphic, the hand barely touching the surface.
The brightest yellow is the exception. Impasto and textural, it sits at the heart of the left mass as the one place where paint accumulates, the one place that refuses to be thin. In a painting about lightness, it is the reminder of what was carried. And what was set down.
At 30"×30", this is one of the smaller works in the Wild collection. The format is deliberate in what it refuses. No hierarchy of top over bottom, dark pressing down on light. Just the horizontal movement of something released.
From the Wild collection, 2024. Featured on AATOUNAU
From the artist's journal:
"There is a freedom in saying yes to yourself. A lightness that comes from walking a path designed in the moment, your feelings as your compass, your intuition steering you towards people and opportunities. I give myself permission to fly above the path rather than struggle on the rocky soil. I feel the lightness of carrying only my desires and my curiosities. This work is a reminder that we can enjoy flowing with the wind, that we can have faith that our gifts and our experiences work together to move us forward, and that freedom is ours to create."
Saying yes to yourself turns out to be the hardest and the lightest thing at the same time.
Not the dramatic yes. The quiet one. The one where you stop consulting everyone else about the direction of your own life and let your feelings do what they were designed to do, point you somewhere. Your intuition as compass. Your desires and curiosities as the only luggage you're carrying.
Set Free shares its palette with Activation, the same Payne's Grey, the same gold and ochre, painted in the aftermath of that awakening. But where Activation records a negotiation, layers pressing against each other, Payne's Grey over yellow over Payne's Grey again, Set Free is what comes after. The paint here is thinly applied, largely a single pass, the hand moving across the surface with the particular confidence of someone who has already made the decision. The dense mass on the left is where the last of the weight lives, Payne's Grey and dark gold working against each other one final time. Then the painting opens. The right field is all air and movement, loose circular marks in cream and grey, light pressure, almost calligraphic, the hand barely touching the surface.
The brightest yellow is the exception. Impasto and textural, it sits at the heart of the left mass as the one place where paint accumulates, the one place that refuses to be thin. In a painting about lightness, it is the reminder of what was carried. And what was set down.
At 30"×30", this is one of the smaller works in the Wild collection. The format is deliberate in what it refuses. No hierarchy of top over bottom, dark pressing down on light. Just the horizontal movement of something released.
From the Wild collection, 2024. Featured on AATOUNAU
From the artist's journal:
"There is a freedom in saying yes to yourself. A lightness that comes from walking a path designed in the moment, your feelings as your compass, your intuition steering you towards people and opportunities. I give myself permission to fly above the path rather than struggle on the rocky soil. I feel the lightness of carrying only my desires and my curiosities. This work is a reminder that we can enjoy flowing with the wind, that we can have faith that our gifts and our experiences work together to move us forward, and that freedom is ours to create."
