Wish You Were Here
48″x48″
Oil & cold wax
Jan 30, 2024: Beginning again. Starting this 48×48 piece with my favorite warm glow.
Feb 4, 2024: Deepening the colors on day 2 of this WIP.
Feb 5, 2024: Listening to Colin Hay got me over the hump today. Diving head first, past those familiar first steps, and into the Unknown. Now I can finally begin…
Feb 7: Working in some bright opaque colors to mitigate the mud. And now this piece is entering into quite the ugly stage.
Lynann Politte at Vashon Center for the Arts has been a joy to collaborate with on my solo show ~ The Art of Daily Practice. My work this past year has been fueled by a vision of what an exhibit of my journal pages could look like. And now, seeing how it all came together, I have to say reality far exceeded my dream!
So much creative collaboration goes into putting on a “solo” show. Many thanks to Lucky Rabbet Framing for doing such a mega job floating & framing 28 journal pages. Thanks also to Lynann and her mentor Paul Martinez who had their work cut out for them with this installation. The placement of every piece has been carefully considered…and the resulting exhibit looks spectacular!!
Coming up
Artist Talk: The Art of Daily Practice
Vashon Center for the Arts
Saturday, Feb. 17 at 2pm.
Thank you to all who came to the opening!! It was lovely to meet so many people new to my art, and to hear their reflections and see the work through their eyes. I was delighted to see old friends from all chapters of my adult life. And Vashon is home to members of my creative team from my film, A Lot Like You. I spent a lot of time on this island in the 8 years it took to make the film, and it was lovely to reunite with Eric Frith (editor), Pete Droge (composer), Elaine Summers (music supervisor) and Jeff Hoyt (voice over coach).
And finally, my gratitude to event photographer Wade Yip, as well as June Sekiguchi, Eric Frith and VCA gallery, for sharing their reception photos. Feel free to click on any image below and scroll through. Enjoy!
In February, I will be exhibiting my latest work at one of my favorite art venues in the Pacific Northwest ~ Vashon Center for the Arts. Together with the gallery manager, Lynann Politte, we came up with a show idea about the ritual of daily practice.
In 2023, I challenged myself to create one small painting every day. I dusted off my smallest sketchbook and let go of any expectations of perfection. My only goal was to show up & play ~ experimenting with materials, color, form and technique. Pretty soon, my journal paintings broke free from covering the whole page, and these bold, colorful forms started to emerge.
This exhibit will include a sampling of my journal pages and some of the larger pieces they inspired.
In my Artist Talk, I will share new research findings about how engaging regularly in a creative practice, regardless of skill level, transforms our brains and bodies. And I will reflect on the most surprising take-aways from my daily writing and painting practice.
🤩 Artist Spotlight: Eliaichi Kimaro has been with Columbia City Gallery for 7yrs. Her newest work can be seen in our “Sanctuary” exhibit thru 1/7.
eliaichi kimaro
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Favorite Seattle neighborhood
• Columbia City, Seward Park ~ happy to love where I live.
Favorite Seattle restaurant & menu item
• El Kiosko’s carnitas burritos, Marination’s spicy pork kimchi fried rice, Chucks Hop Shop’s fries, Hey Day’s pesto bacon toast, King Donuts’ chocolate old fashioned.
Favorite Seattle park
• Seward Park
Favorite style of house
• Craftsman
Favorite movie theater
• I love(d) Seattle’s Landmark theaters ~ esp. Harvard Exit, Egyptian, Seven Gables
Who would play you in the movie of your life?
• Octavia Spencer could pull off my blend of funny + earnest.
What’s your go-to comfort food?
• Bibimbap, waffles.
Where’s the coolest place you traveled?
• Gombe National Park ~ Jane Goodall’s chimpanzee reserve. Met her son, sat in the house she built with her mom in the 70s and talked with her fellow researcher for several hours. And spent whole days observing and walking amongst chimps in the wild.
Favorite karaoke song
• Faithfully, Killing Me Softly, The Jeffersons theme song
What’s your best Halloween costume?
• Morpheus (The Matrix)
The Offering (48″x48″): I love pieces that develop in their own time. As these paintings grow with me over months, my challenges, wishes, joys and sorrows get embedded in the layers. The painting becomes a time capsule that captures who I am and how I’m feeling as the piece evolves.
I love some of the color and energy in the earlier versions, but these passages, while pretty, were meaningless. I relish paintings where the struggle leads me to unknown places and pushes me beyond my capabilities. At their best, my paintings feel like an archeological discovery, as if I’m unearthing something that’s always been there. The finished piece is something I never could (or would) set out to paint. So these origin stories remind me of how a painting came to be…
June 15, 2023: I am both here and not here…a meditation on impermanence that is resonating with me today. And so I embedded it in the first layer of this 48″x48″ piece.
June 18: Starting to build up surface history that I can later work back into. Happy to be working large once again…
June 22: Working on large pieces in a small studio makes it hard to stand back and view the painting from a distance. So posting progress pics on Instagram scales down the image, allowing me to troubleshoot compositional problems and figure out where the piece wants to go next…🤓
June 25: Very early stages yet, but after a brief TimeOut, we’re starting to listen to each other…
I was recently a guest on the Future Tripping Podcast, a project of the Trauma Stewardship Institute. The host, Laura van Dernoot Lipsky, is an author/activist, an internationally recognized leader in the field of trauma exposure ~ and one of my dearest friends for the past 30+ years! As such, she holds all the pieces of my personal, family, work and creative life. At its core, our conversation reveals the depth and breadth of “making art to better understand my cultural inheritance and legacy,” and shows why art – the creation and maintenance of it – can be an essential act of liberation.💗
In March, I participated in Crush/Repeat, a 31-day challenge to create something every day. I decided to focus on creating a small painting in my sketchbook daily. And now I can’t stop!
I could line a shelf with all the sketchbooks I’ve abandoned after a couple pages of tentative marks. So I pulled out my smallest (5.5″x8.5″), cheapest sketchbook and let go of any expectation to produce anything finished. My only goal was to show up & play ~ experimenting with colors, materials and techniques. The lessons learned from these bold little explorations are starting to show up in my larger paintings.
Starting my days by writing in my journal, followed by a 20 minute art page, loosens me up and gets me in the zone. I am no longer tethered to needing a full day in the studio to feel like I got my creativity fix. If 20 minutes is all I have, I know it will be enough. 
(I’m grateful to my friend, Helen Kim, for showing me the way of her morning pages.)
I had the joy of talking with a dear friend the other day on her podcast (more info soon!) And as it often does, our conversation sparked further thoughts and ideas. So I’m trying something new. I will be posting short videos ~ a parking lot of thoughts/ideas about art and life, and why creativity (in its myriad of forms) matters…
Day One
Three weeks after returning from France, I’m finally sitting down to reflect on this residency experience and the profound impact it has made on my art practice and my life.
I spent the month of September at Chateau Orquevaux in France with 17 other artists. We’re writers, painters, collage artists, photographers, builders and makers from Iran, India, Ukraine, Russia, El Salvador, Canada, and the US. All but 2 were there for the full 4 weeks. The setting was sublime. Every resident had a private room and private studio. Just imagine waking up to this view every morning!
View from my bed (!!!)
I lucked out by also having an en suite bathroom (shhh!!) and a private bath. And here’s the kicker ~ all meals were provided. There was never a shortage of food. Or wine. Or coffee…
Classically trained Chef Marie brings the joy every single night, providing numerous menu options to accommodate everyone’s dietary needs.
Especially as a mom, having all my needs met, having nowhere else and no one else I needed to be, nothing else I needed to be doing but diving deep and creatively exploring was life changing.
The Stables. My studio = carriage doors on the left.
My studio was in the stables, just down the driveway from the Chateau. As someone with a home studio, this ritual of walking to my work space was new to me. I came to appreciate this short commute between where I live and where I create. This distance gave me the privacy I needed to release the pressure valve and finally explore matters I’d been avoiding. With no to-do lists cluttering my mind, my journal pages were filling with hopes, dreams, and fears that needed a wide expanse of time and space to surface.
Then, with my heart wide open and vulnerable, I would head into the studio. Instead of listening to podcasts, as per usual, I listened to music. Following a tip from my writer friend Jonathon, when I found a song that resonated with the emotional space I was in (or wanted to be in), I added it to my ChateauO playlist and put it on repeat. And wow, did that open doors I wasn’t ready for. My thinky brain was no longer in command of my creative process. All I could do was paint my way through my feelings…which was one of my creative goals.
Rise & Shine, Acrylic & oil on 30″x 40″ linen canvas.
At this point, I could write about the work I made, the breakthrough pieces, my choice of medium and materials. And maybe I will in another post. But here’s the honest truth. I was ready to show up and make a lot of work. I was prepared to push myself to go deeper. I was looking forward to luxe accommodations and exploring the grounds and the town.
But what blindsided me was the degree to which I would fall in love with my fellow residents. After 2+ years of being an isolated pod person, I felt socially awkward and dreaded having to engage with strangers for 4 weeks. Luckily from what I could tell, socializing was limited to dinners and sporadic evening events.
Chateau Orquevaux ~ September 2022 Residents
I never imagined a gathering of such talented, brilliant, wickedly funny people. We laughed, danced, sang, cried, explored, told stories, bore witness, made art, played dress up, took chances, and bared our souls. My final Instagram reel contains no images of the mountains of art we made. Just photos of people falling in love, making memories that will last a lifetime. All in the span of 28 days.
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